Mike Sutton's States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis

What Might Possibly be the Impact of the Current States of Denial of the New Discovery of Matthew's influence on Darwin's and Wallace's Influencers?

Stanley Cohen's (2001) 'States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering   ' explains how people deny the significance of sufficient evidence that something is happening or happened in the past. Cohen explains how people do this with regard to a range of things such as marital infidelity, alcoholism, terminal illness, child abuse and genocide:

'One common thread runs through the many different stories of denial: people, organizations, governments or whole societies are presented with information that is too disturbing, threatening or anomalous to be fully absorbed or openly acknowledged. The information is therefore somehow repressed, disavowed, pushed aside or reinterpreted. Or else the information 'registers' well enough, but its implications - cognitive, emotional or moral - are evaded, neutralized or rationalized away.'

Stanley Cohen (2001) States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. p. 1.

Public Domain

Linking Cohen's ideas on 'states of denial' with Sykes's and Matza's (1957) Classification of the Techniques of Guilt Neutralization    provides a powerful combination of explanatory frameworks that helps us to understand how bias is the beginning of the spectrum of dysology that leads ultimately to the capacity to create hate crime in human societies.

Attribution

If the logic of Sutton's 2015 'States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis' stands up and if it is not disconfirmed by evidence regarding how hate crimes emerge and flourish, then - for example - the current evolutionary biology micro-cultural 'state of denial' of the existence and significance of the New Evidence (Sutton 2014   ) about who did read Patrick Matthew's (1831) original ideas on natural selection before Darwin and Wallace (1858) replicated them is a social problem in need of a solution. And if it is, then dreadfully biased historical scholarship in the field of evolutionary biology is just one among the great multitude of examples of published poor scholarship, in all fields of enquiry, in need of rather urgent attention.

Dysology.comAttribution

Mike Sutton's (2015) 'States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis'.

A note on 'states of denial' and the scientific community's belief in the version of events supplied by evolutionary biologists on the discovery of natural selection.

Evolutionary biologists have got themselves into an embarrassing "State of Denial" about the newly discovered sufficient evidence that Matthew did influence Darwin and Wallace..

The literature record proves that Darwin lied by writing the very opposite to the fact we 100% know he knew to be true when. in 1860, Matthew informed him in writing that two naturalists had read Matthew's (1831) original ideas on natural selection. One - the famous naturalist John Loudon - cited him. Darwin's published lie in response to these facts was that Matthew's ideas had been completely unread. And Darwin convinced his readers by that very lie that Matthew could not have influenced him or Wallace or any of their pre-1858 influencers.

Darwin's lie was malevolent (Cohen p, 22) because he knew all the facts but blatantly lied to conceal the truth (here). According to Cohen, such convincing lying reinforces the liar's own denial of the real facts (Cohen, S 2001 'States of Denial' page 31).

Incidentally, besides the fact his 1831 book is newly discovered to have been cited by seven naturalists pre 1858 (as opposed to the Darwinist version that none read his ideas) the originator of natural selection, Patrick Matthew, most likely influenced Herbert Spencer (via Robert Chambers - who is one of those seven naturalists). See here   .

The New Data that proves there were routes for knowledge contamination from Matthew's 1831 ideas to Darwin and Wallace via the four naturalists they knew who read Matthew's book and cited it pre-1858. In fact, they cited it years before Darwin or Wallace published a word on the topic. Cohen (p. 22) helps us interpret what this means:

'Denial is always partial, some information is always registered. This paradox - or doubleness - knowing and not knowing is the heart of the concept. It creates what Wurmser nicely calls 'Pseudo-stupidity.'

And we have seen plenty of pseudo-stupidity so far in the mass media and on various social media with various attempts to spin the obvious significance of the new facts into a Darwinist comfort blanket of denial that they have any significance at all - despite the fact they completely puncture the myth upon which Darwinists have built their paradigm of belief in Darwin's and Wallace's claims to have each independently discovered Matthew's prior-published original ideas. Those same ideas we now newly know did influence Darwin's and Wallace's facilitators, influencers and friends who not only read but cited them in the newly re-discovered literature. See: here   .

It seems to me - after reading Stanley Cohen's excellent book "States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering' - that such biased scholarship combines to create an enabling environment for all kinds of dangerous quackery and claptrap, as well as a dysological pseudo-scholarly soup in which hate crime can grow and flourish. If this turns out to be the case, then evolutionary biologists - writing disproven fallacies on the history of discovery of natural selection - are just one micro-culture of scholars who are unwittingly (or perhaps half-wittedly) making the world a dangerous and unpleasant place in which to live.See: here. I believe we all have a duty to ensure such pseudo-stupidity does not prevail in the world of science and history of discovery.

Key points from Cohen's 'States of Denial' on the question of the significance of the newly discovered fact that other naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace did read Matthew's prior-published ideas on natural selection before Darwin and Wallace replicated those ideas and then claimed in their defence that no naturalists had read them before 1858.

• "Why though is it a 'paradox' that denial relieves us from immediate anxiety, but that we must 'renounce its comforts' to remain alert to long-term dangers?" (p.31)[Note: I think my States of Denial Spectrum answers this question].
• In 1860 Matthew, wrote two letters to the Gardener's Chronicle to inform it editor and readership that he had - 27 years before Darwin and Wallace - had published his original discovery of the entire complex hypothesis of natural selection and his original coining of the artificial versus natural selection 'analogy of differences', which perfectly explains it. Both letters were published. Darwin (1859) and Wallace (1858) replicated both. In his first letter, Matthew informed Darwin that the internationally famous botanist/biologist and polymath naturalist John Loudon had reviewed his book. Darwin knew Loudon's work well. His pre-1858 notebooks are jam packed with references to his work - some of which Darwin heavily annotated. Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker knew Loudon and his work well - pre-1858 he to referenced that work many times and, reviewed it highly in the press and corresponded in praise of Loudon. That review contained the following line:(Loudon, 1832: 702-703) 'One of the subjects discussed in this appendix is the puzzling one, of the origin of species and varieties; and if the author has hereon originated no original views (and of this we are far from certain), he has certainly exhibited his own in an original manner . Darwin replied to Matthew's letter with a lie - claiming the opposite to what he had informed by Matthew - he wrote that no naturalist had read Matthew's ideas:" I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr Matthew's views, "Darwin's 1860 letter of reply was published in the Gardener's Chronicle. Matthew wrote a second letter to Darwin - correcting him by making it very plain that another naturalist had also read his original ideas but feared teaching them because they trespassed on the territory of natural divinity, which dominated science in the first half of the 19th century. Matthew (1860) wrote back and the Gardener's Chronicle published his second letter: 'I notice in your Number of April 21 Mr. Darwin’s letter honourably acknowledging my prior claim relative to the origin of species. I have not the least doubt that, in publishing his late work, he believed he was the first discoverer of this law of Nature. He is however wrong in thinking that no naturalist was aware of the previous discovery. I had occasion some 15 years ago to be conversing with a naturalist, a professor of a celebrated university, and he told me he had been reading my work “Naval Timber,” but that he could not bring such views before his class or uphold them publicly from fear of the cutty-stool, a sort of pillory punishment, not in the market-place and not devised for this offence, but generally practised a little more than half a century ago. It was at least in part this spirit of resistance to scientific doctrine that caused my work to be voted unfit for the public library of the fair city itself. The age was not ripe for such ideas, nor do I believe is the present one,..' Darwin responded to this second letter with his same lie. Following Matthew's detailed information to the contrary he wrote a private letter To the famous French naturalist Quatrefages de Bréau in his letter of April 25, 1861 Darwin lied:"I have lately read M. Naudin's paper; but it does not seem to me to anticipate me, as he does not shew how Selection could be applied under nature; but an obscure writer on Forest Trees, in 1830, in Scotland, most expressly & clearly anticipated my views—though he put the case so briefly, that no single person ever noticed the scattered passages in his book." Then in 1861 in the Third Edition of the Origin of Species - and in every edition thereafter, Darwin continued that exact same great self serving lie about Matthew's book, and who read the ideas in it. That third lie corrupted - for 155 years - the history of the discovery of natural selection. Darwin (1861) wrote in the third edition of The Origin of Species -despite being informed of the exact opposite by Matthew only the year before - the following lie:' Unfortunately the view was given by Mr Matthew very briefly in scattered pages in an Appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr Matthew himself drew attention to it in the Gardener’s Chronicle.' These are clear lies by Darwin because as Cohen (2001,p, 37) explains, in relation to lies in general, they are assertions that are known to be untrue. They were written with an intention to deceive and dupe the world about the facts and the false intentions of the liar - Charles Darwin.
• Darwin's best friend - Joseph Hooker - approved Darwin's lying letter of reply to the Gardener's Chronicle, signed, re-dated it and forwarded it to the Editor at Darwin's insistence. Hooker, who had earlier in 1858 misled the Linnean Society into believing Wallace gave his permission for his Ternate paper to be read before the society in accompaniment with Darwin's, knew Loudon was an internationally famous naturalist and yet he approved Darwin's lie. Why?. We may speculate that Hooker was possibly engaged in an act of what Cohen p, 40 refers to as ' self-deception'. : "So long as they remained ignorant of the details they could 'say later 'We didn't know'". Perhaps Hooker knew there were facts to the contrary, but was deliberately ignorant of the details of those facts?. In this role Hooker played in the story of Matthew and Darwin, he may have sought to ensure he remained willfully ignorant of exactly what Loudon had written in 1832 about Matthew's original ideas.'
• Alternatively, Hooker knowing colluded in a great cover-up with Darwin in order to help his best friend commit the World's greatest science fraud by way of plagiarising glory theft of the influence of the originator Matthew on the scientific community. This might be so, since I originally discovered in 2014    that Loudon went on to edit two journal articles on the topic of organic evolution written by Blyth (1855, 1856). And Byth was Darwin's prolific informant and influencer. For Darwin or Hooker to admit that Loudon cited Matthew's original ideas would mean admitting that 'knowledge contamination' routes existed between Matthew's 1831 book and Darwin's and Wallace's supposedly independent replications of his original ideas and explanatory examples.
• We know Darwin acted in 'bad faith' by lying that Matthew's bombshell ideas were unread before he replicated them, and that Hooker may have been acting in similar bad faith. But what of other Darwinists? Cohen (2001, p.40) wrote of how the majority of Germans in WWII must have known that something dreadful was being done to the Jews but that they chose, as an act of 'bad faith', not to want to know the details. In that way, they both knew and did not know that something dreadful was happening. They were in a particular 'state of bad faith denial' Perhaps, by way of analogy, the Royal Society Darwin medal winners Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayor were acting in bad faith when they simply parroted Darwin's great lie that Matthew's ideas were unread by anyone/any biologist. Being the World's leading experts in the field we might be forgiven for insisting that they must surely have read Matthew's two l1860 letters to Darwin about two naturalists who had read his original ideas. Remaining ignorant of the details whilst parroting Darwin's lie suggests de Beer and Mayr were both in a 'state of denial' - either as an act of deliberate bad faith - or else by 'active denial' (Cohen 2001, p. 32) involving 'plugging leaks' in the story of Darwin's and Wallace's claimed independent discoveries of Matthew's original ideas with deliberate lies. In light of what I have uniquely discovered, it would be an act of bad faith for us not to ask the Royal Society: 'Could de Beer and Mayr (or any other Darwin Medal winner) win the Darwin Medal by writing the dreadful truth about Darwin's lies about who really read Matthew's ideas before Darin replicated them? If not, why not?
• In light of my original (Sutton 2014)    discovery that, as opposed to the prior 'knowledge claim' that no one known to Darwin or Wallace read Matthew's original ideas on natural selection before they replicated them in 1858, that seven naturalists read them - four known to Darwin/Wallace and three (Loudon, Chambers and Selby) at the epicentre of influence on their work on the same topic - read and cited Matthew's book pre-1858 - it would be an act of bad faith for us to fail to investigate the private journal and correspondence archives of those seven naturalists (and those they knew) to see whether Darwin or any of his closest associates (such as Lyell, Joseph and William Hooker, Wallace, Huxley or Jenyns etc) knew about Matthew's original discovery pre-1858.
• In light of the 100 per cent proof that - as opposed to none - we now know that there are several newly-unearthed routes of potential knowledge contamination of Matthew's original ideas into the pre-1858 minds of Darwin and Wallace via their influencers, it is arguably an act of bad faith, therefore for other scholars (e.g.Weale 2015   ) to deny the significance of the New Data by simply, without evidence, or critical argument, dismissing its significance by merely claiming that the evidence that Matthew influenced Darwin and Wallace is simply "weak" and not, therefore, worthy of their academic consideration.
• Darwin's expert biographer, James Moore (2014)    responded in the national press to the original news that I had discovered naturalists who did read and cite Matthew's ideas. His response was the knee-jerk dismissal that he doubted I had discovered anything new that had not already been discovered and interpreted in the oppsite direction. Moore's fallacious dismissal (Cohen 2001, p.31) of the facts being anything new might - depending on his state of mind and intentions - be described as (a) 'a psychotic negation of manifest facts'; (b) a 'plugging of leaks' in the orthodox story by lying (Cohen 2001, p.31) (c) a refusal (state of denial by dually knowing and not knowing) refusal to believe it or an inability to 'take it in' (Cohen 2001, p.24.) because, if true, the facts seriously threaten his sense of personal and professional cultural identity

Conclusion and the way forward

There is much in the behaviour of Darwin and his Darwinists that is worthy of further investigation by social scientists interested in 'states of denial', veracity, and plagiarising science fraud glory theft .

The notion of the 'comfort zone' is useful for helping us understand why Darwinists have chosen to be in a 'state of denial' of the uncomfortable facts about their ludicrously deified namesake.