"Scientific endeavour presupposes a progressive conception of knowledge. Understanding at any one moment is imperfect, and defects can be exposed by testing hypotheses against reality, through either adding new data or experimentation." Byrne (1989 pp. 273-4)
What follows is my full position paper on what the New Evidence means for Darwinism in the history of scientific discovery. A far briefer criticism versus rebuttal paper can be found here. I advise readers to begin with that shorter version before proceeding to read this full position paper.
Introduction
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Patrick Matthew: Solver of the problem of emergence of new and extinction of species, God-slaying biological father of the theory of natural selection
The natural process of selection (Matthew 1831), or 'natural selection' for short, is arguably the most important scientific discovery ever made. This essay is my draft position paper on our evolving knowledge on the history of the discovery of that theory, which made Charles Darwin famous. Readers of my work on this particular topic will be familiar with my researches into the history of that discovery.
Important New Data has been discovered on this topic (Sutton 2014 ), which utterly myth busts the prior knowledge-belief, started by Darwin's deliberate lies in 1860, that no known naturalists, indeed no one of at all (Darwin 1861), read Matthew's (1831) unique ideas before publication of Darwin's 'Origin of Species' in 1859.
The underlying principle of my thinking in this area is that scholarly knowledge, as opposed to faith-belief, is always open to refutation in light of new data or new theories. In light of the New Data that I have discovered, we now need to shake the system until it reflects the truth.
In this essay, it is that new data that is the focus. In particular, how that data challenges the currently orthodox Darwinist hypothesis that Matthew, Darwin and Wallace all arrived at their discoveries of the same theory independently of one another.
I can think of no more fitting words than those of William James Dempster (1957, p. 9) to describe the open-minded, scientific, approach that I have striven to achieve in my research on this particular topic. Of course, I cannot be the judge as to how well I have measured-up to the general ideal:
'Nothing, however, in these critical comments should be interpreted in a dogmatic way; dogma, particularly in science, is peculiarly opposed to the very spirit of inquiry. The character of knowledge is transcendental; truth itself is transitory and evolving; theories come and go and it is as well that we remember that. Only the less thoughtful can afford to be cocksure today.'
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):
‘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.’
But if those three sentences do not, in fact, say that Darwin had seen Matthew’s work, replicated it, and then perpetrated a long-running science fraud by never admitting he had prior-knowledge of Matthew’s discovery, what do they say?
However, as Dempster made clear, Matthew also accepted at face value, in print at least, Darwin’s excuse that he had arrived at the theory independently. Consequently, despite Dempster’s able championing of Matthew, Darwinists retained their solution to the problem of Matthew’s prior discovery by affixing him with their mutually approved status of obscure curiosity. Refusing to give the originator of natural selection his due credit for discovering it – no matter how good and complete his hypothesis - Darwinists stuck to their guns – in the teeth of Dempster’s superb scholarship - by claiming that there was no evidence that Matthew had influenced a single person with his discovery.
What has been newly discovered in Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret that changes everything we thought we knew about the discovery of natural selection?
Before the publication of Nullius, Darwinists simply believed their namesake and Alfred Wallace when each claimed to have discovered natural selection "independently" of Patrick Matthew's prior published theory. They held this mere belief because none had looked behind Darwin's (1860) excuse for replicating Matthew's prior published unique discovery that : "I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I nor apparently any other naturalist had heard of Mr Matthews’ views..."
So what did I uniquely discover to prove the rational improbability that either or Darwin or Wallace discovered natural selection independently of Patrick Matthew's prior publication of the full hypothesis? And what did I uniquely discover to prove Darwin and Wallace were not at all the honest and humble scientists portrayed in the literature - but were instead egotistical self-serving liars?
1. Darwin lied when he wrote in his defense in the Gardeners Chronicle in 1860 that :"...neither I nor apparently any other naturalist had heard of Mr Matthews’ views..." because Matthew told him in the letter to which Darwin responded with that lie that John Loudon had written a review of his book. Loudon - a noted botanist and fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the Linnean Society (amongst others) had been dead 16 years by then. But Darwin knew he was a naturalists because his notebook of books read was jam packed with Loudon's books (often heavily anotated). And that same notebook showed that Darwin had held in his hands at least five publications that cited Matthew, two of which were written by Loudon. Moreover, Darwin had his best friend the botanist Joseph Hooker approve his letter containing this lie and then send it on his behalf to the Gardener's chronicle. Joseph Hooker also knew Loudon was a naturalist. In fact he had earlier written that Loudon was better than any other in Europe. This is the same Joseph Hooker who had in 1858 worked with Darwin's other great friend and mentor Charles Lyel to slyly mislead the Linnean Society into believing Wallace had given his consent to have his paper read before them and then published with Darwin's. Wallace's paper they read along with (but after) Darwin's so that it would thereafter be called Darwin's and Wallace's theory. Darwin continued his lie that Matthew's book had gone unread (despite Matthew telling him in his second letter to the Gardener's Chronicle of other naturalists besides Loudon who had read it) from the third edition of the Origin of species and in a letter to the eminent French naturalist Quatrefages de Bréau (April 25, 1861 ).
2. For the past 155 years Darwin Scholars have been, and many continue to be, in a classic 'state of denial of the fact that Darwin lied about the prior readership of Matthew's book before 1860 - and more besides. For full details visit the 'States of Denial' page of PatrickMatthew.com.
Had any Darwinists - who society relies upon to tell the veracious story of the discovery of natural selection - not simply swallowed Darwin's story- hook, line and "Hooker" - noticed Darwin's great lie that no naturalist had read Matthew's book pre 1860 then they might have investigated whether or not what Loudon did as a naturalist might be important in the veracious story of the discovery of natural selection. Had they done that then they would have discovered that Loudon did far more than write in his 1832 book review that Matthew may have written something original on "the origin of species", because they would also have found what I uniquely discovered: namely, that Loudon edited two of Edward Blyth's influential papers on the evolution of species and varieties of organic life; papers which definitely influenced Darwin - because he wrote from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward that Byth was his most important and prolific informant on the topic.
Had any Darwinists - who society relies upon to tell the veracious story of the discovery of natural selection - not simply swallowed Darwin's story- hook, line and "Hooker" - noticed Darwin's great lie that no naturalist had read Matthew's book pre 1860 then they might have investigated whether or not what Loudon did as a naturalist might be important in the veracious story of the discovery of natural selection. Had they done that then they would have discovered that Loudon did far more than write in his 1832 book review that Matthew may have written something original on "the origin of species", because they would also have found what I uniquely discovered: namely, that Loudon edited two of Edward Blyth's influential papers on the evolution of species and varieties of organic life; papers which definitely influenced Darwin - because he wrote from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward that Byth was his most important and prolific informant on the topic.
3. To further uniquely bust the myth that no naturalist read Matthew's (1831) prior published hypothesis, I uniquely discovered six more naturalists actually cited it in the literature before Darwin's and Wallace's papers were read before the Linnean Society in 1858. Darwin knew four of them. And Darwin and Wallace were influenced and facilitated by two of those naturalists.
- Selby cited Matthew's book many times in 1842 and then went on to edit Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper - which Darwin also read pre 1858. Darwin and his friends knew Selby very well. Darwin sat on committees with him and his father and friends had even stayed at Selby's home - where Matthew's book sat in the library.
- Chambers cited Matthew's book in 1832 and then in 1842 wrote 'The Vestiges of Creation' the best seller on evolution that was Wallace's greatest influence and a great influence on Darwin for famously putting evolution "in the air" in the first half of the 19th century. Darwin was a friend and correspondent of Chambers. And Lyell was a member of the same Geological society as Chambers and heard him speak on more than one occasion. It is well known that both Darwin and Lyell knew that Chambers was the anonymous author of the heretical Vestiges.
4. Wallace misled the world in his autobiography by slyly deleting incriminating text in his transcription of his letter to his mother where he had written that following what Darwin, Lyell and Hooker had done at the Linnean Society with his work that he was owed "assistance" by Darwin and his associates. And he did indeed receive a great deal of financial and social "assistance" from them thereafter.
5. Darwin told a further five lies that mislead the world into crediting him with priority over Matthew for the Originator's unique discovery.
6. Matthew was the first to use the powerfully simple Artificial versus Natural Selection Analogy of Differences to explain the complexity of natural selection. This is probably the most important explanatory analogy ever published in the history of humanity. Loren Eiseley (1979) had earlier discovered that Darwin's unpublished (1844) replicated Matthew's (1831) plants grown in nurseries versus those growing wild analogy of differences to explain the operation of natural selection. What none before me picked up on is that Darwin (1859) opened Chapter 1 of the Origin of Species with Matthew's unique explanatory analogy:
'When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature.'
7. Wallace replicated that exact same analogy of differences in his 1858 Ternate paper, which was read after Darwin's before the Linnean Society in 1858.
8. Using new technology of Big Data analysis, I was able to determine - out of over 30 million publications in Google's Library Project - which terms and phrases in his 1831 book were apparently coined by Matthew and who was then apparently first to be second to use them in print. I discovered many naturalists well known to Darwin and his closest associates who were apparently first to be second with apparently unique Matthewisms. Surprisingly,six out of only 28 people in the entire world discovered in this way were naturalists well known to Charles Lyell. This method also uniquely revealed that Chambers was first to be second to replicate Matthew's unique term for his discovery 'natural process of selection' and that Darwin uniquely four-word-shuffled that term into its only grammatically correct equivalent 'process of natural selection', which he used nine times in the Origin of Species(1859).
9. An electronic plagiarism check reveals many examples of great similarity between the prose and ideas of Wallace and Darwin compared to Matthew's. But Darwin also replicated Matthew's unique creative process by replicating his examples of how the natural process of selection works. By way of just two examples in addition to the example of plants grown in nurseries that Eiseley discovered, Darwin also replicated Matthew's examples of what happens when many seedlings spring up together in a forest. Moreover, he replicated what Matthew cited from Steuart (1828) about cattle eating young trees. . Only where Matthew cited his source about the cattle example, Darwin audaciously pretended it was his own observation in nature. My book, Nullius , has an entire chapter dedicated to many other uniquely discovered examples of Darwin's and Wallace's obvious plagiarism of Matthew's book.
10. Nullius uniquely contains the 'Virgin Darwin Allegorical Analogy Explanation ', which Is particularly designed for Darwinist atheists. In effect, the analogy is that we know the Virgin Mary of Christian belief was surrounded by men whose testicles were to some unknown degree fertile. And it is for that reason that her mythical conception of the child of a supernatural sky-dwelling deity ("God") is a supernatural miracle. Analogously to the Blessed St Mary, so too do we newly know that, pre-1858, Darwin and Wallace were surrounded and influenced by men whose brains were fertile to some unknown degree with Matthew's unique ideas - because those men had read and then cited his book and they are known influencers of Darwin and Wallace. It would, therefore, be a supernatural miracle, perhaps granted by some divine invisible cognitive contraceptive, for both Darwin and Wallace to have immaculately conceived Patrick Matthew's prior published unique complex theory of the natural process of selection, his four words to name it, his analogy to explain it and even his unique and idiosyncratic examples of its operation in nature.
Darwinists, unconvinced by the strong new evidence for Darwin's and Wallace's work being contaminated by Matthew's influence, and similarly unconvinced by the further evidence for their science fraud being more likely than not, insist that we must - in order to convince them - find in the decimated archives of the 19th century a "smoking" gun letter from or to Darwin and or Wallace revealing that they definitely knew about Matthew's unique ideas pre-1858. By rational retort, the lesson of the 'Virgin Darwin Allegorical Analogy Explanation ' is to ask them a most telling question: "Why then do you not insist on us finding a 2000 year old paternity admission letter from the human biological father of Jesus of Nazareth in order to be convinced that it would be a miracle for Jesus to be the biological son of the Christian 'God'?" The answer is because Darwinists already know that it is outside the realm of current scientific experience and understanding for women to conceive a child without the presence of male human sperm. Can Darwinists, therefore, show us one example in the whole of human history where a complex prior published theory has been immaculately conceived by another human (never mind two at the same time) whilst surrounded, facilitated and influenced by others who read it before influencing them, corresponding with them, meeting with them and their family and other friends and influencers and facilitating their work? Of course not. Darwinists are, therefore, being completely irrational by denying the strength and great importance of the new data in Nullius. It seems they do not love science and reason at all.
Conclusion
In addition to these unique discoveries, which mean highly influential knowledge contamination from Matthew to Darwin and Wallace is now rationally proven far more likely than not, I have uniquely unearthed a plethora of clues as to where to look next for printed or hand-written 19th century confirmatory evidence that the author or recipient of as yet undiscovered "smoking gun" text was Darwin or Wallace; or else where to look next for such documentary evidence that reveals that they knew by reading or else writing it that Darwin or Wallace was aware of Matthew's book pre 1858. Namely, in the correspondence, notebooks, published and unpublished work, and private diary archives of those I discovered cited Matthew's (1831) book before 1858, or else were apparently first to be second with apparently unique Matthewisms before 1858 - and also in the diaries, notebooks, published and unpublished work and private correspondence archives of their friends and associates. Let us call this Sutton's New Data Hypothesis. And let it be noted boldly here for the historical record that I am publicly inviting other scholars to be guided by the names uniquely unearthed in my book Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret to go out into the field and test it. I do this just as Matthew (1831) invited other scholars to test his own unique hypothesis of the natural process of selection by their observations and experiments.
A Note of Rational Caution: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence
Professional Darwinists, as natural scientists, are perhaps particularly unsuited as a group to objectively and logically assess the evidence for their namesake's plagiarizing science fraud. There is, obviously, the first great handicap they carry, which is that Darwinists are named for the man they would try to objectively investigate. More so, however, is the problem that these scholars repeatedly confuse Darwin's private notebooks and letters as some kind of objective fossil record of what he did or did not do or know.
Darwin - like all of us - was no robot. Consequently, he did not write down or record everything he did or knew. Darwinists themselves know this - when it suits them - because they know that Darwin never could tell his publisher - who demanded to know - where exactly he found the term 'natural selection' in the literature. Darwin could only write. fallaciously, that the term was in abundant use in the literature. Moreover, Darwin's Darwinists even refer to some of Darwin's most important private documents as his "torn apart notebooks". And many have remarked on the extent to which letters in the Darwin archive are simple "missing". In reality, it is no secret that much of Darwin's correspondence - and letters he received - are "missing". Wallace's original Ternate paper is "missing". Darwin tore his own notebooks apart and ripped out many pages from his notebooks. What those pages contained we will never know. Darwin habitually rendered whole sections of his own handwriting illegible by scribbling over it. Relying therefore on the insensible argument that what survives of Darwin's letters and notebooks show that he slowly and independently of Matthew's prior published book discovered the bombshell hypothesis of natural selection is just plain silly. Darwinists do themselves a great intellectual disservice by relying upon such daft-as-a-brush reasoning as some kind of strong evidence that their namesake arrived at the theory of natural selection independently of Matthew, because we now newly know that both Darwin and Wallace were influenced and facilitated pre-1858 by naturalists who they knew - who they said were a great influence upon them - who had cited Matthew's 1831 book, which contained the full theory of natural selection , in the literature before 1858 (Chambers) and by another (Blyth) whose editor (Loudon) had reviewed it and remarked on its originality on the topic of "the origin of species" and by Wallace's own Sarawak paper editor (Selby) who sat with Darwin on various scientific committees many times pre 1858 and had both Darwin's father and his great friend Jenyns as house guests - where Matthew's book sat in his library, having been purchased for him in 1840 by the great and influential naturalist Jardine - no less.
To be kind, the least we can say now is that any Darwinists claiming in their namesake's defense that this new evidence is weak are being irrational. In the name of reason, the new evidence is so strong it logically renders all previous evidence for Darwin's and Wallace's so called dual "independent" discoveries of Matthew's prior published hypothesis not just weak but completely insensible.
The problem, however, for veracity in the history of science is the same as James Randi famously explained about those who believe in the paranormal and other debunked and otherwise un-evidenced nonsense:
"The public really doesn't listen when they are being told straight-forward facts. They would rather accept what some charismatic character tells them than really think about what the truth might be. They would rather have the romance and the lies"
The general public, by simply believing the words of those charismatic Darwinists posing as skeptical scientists and educators, writing scholarly books and articles that teach their now debunked fallacies about the history of Matthew's book, have fallen into the exact same trap as credulous punters at a spoon bending séance.
More Detail
Filling in the knowledge gaps as to what really happened to Matthew’s ideas between their publication in 1831 and Wallace’s, (1855), Darwin’s and Wallace’s (1858) and Darwin’s (1859) replication, Darwinists simply parrot Darwin’s 'Appendix Myth' 'Scattered Passages Myth' and 'Mere Enunciation Myth' as plausible devices to enable them to accept Darwin’s fallacious tale that Matthew’s ideas went unread by natural scientists until Matthew drew Darwin’s attention to them in 1860. You can read more about those three myths in Nullius and about Jim Dempster in my blog post about his life. I wish he had lived to learn how it was his scholarship that enabled me to make sense of the great importance of the New Data that refutes the 155 year old Darwinist tale that no naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace had read Matthew's book before 1858. I never met him but Nullius is dedicated to Dempster's superb critical scholarship.
My Motives and Meanings
My position in conducting research on this topic, the publication of my book and the writing of these very words you are reading is based on a desire to pursue veracity. As Joseph Agassi (2008, p.xix) so neatly puts it, far better than I might be able:
'The aim of this study is to encourage historians of science to write without beautifying, to examine the past without concealment of past errors and failings, especially important ones, and to worry less about the reputation of science and more about engaging their readers in exciting intellectual adventures.'
When I use the terms 'Darwinist' 'Darwinian' and 'Darwinism ' in all of my writing I do not use them to criticise the scientific theory of 'natural selection'. I use them to describe both the belief, and the holders of that contested belief, that the hypothesis of natural selection was discovered by Charles Darwin independently of its full, complete and appreciable prior publication by the Originator Patrick Matthew in 1831.
When I use the term Originator I use it in exactly the same way Professor Milton Wainwright uses it . Namely, to describe the person who was actually first to discover and so be the founder of that discovery. The published literature record serves as an intellectual paternity test - unless dis-confirming evidence is discovered - to prove that Patrick Matthew is the biological cognitive father of the Theory of Natural Selection. Matthew was first to describe and explain that intellectual discovery, and the first to publish and have read and cited in the literature his ideas about it.
According to all our current knowledge, under this simple, straightforwardly honest and common sense definition and its interpretation, the only originator of the theory of natural selection is Patrick Matthew.
A person can only be the originator of that which is uniquely original, and therefore originally their discovery or creative creation. The hypothesis of natural selection was originally Matthew's completely original discovery. More so, his idiosyncratic terms and examples to explain it are solely his. Matthew originated the hypothesis of natural selection. Matthew explained it first with unique examples. That makes Matthew the only person who we can possibly, rationally, name the originator of the hypothesis of natural selection.
Matthew v Darwin & Wallace in light of the New Evidence that 'Knowledge Contamination' Happened
An idea that diseases such as cholera were spread by invisible vapours characterized by foul smells once held sway. Known as the Miasma Theory , it was was disconfirmed in the second half of the 19th century by germ theory .
So much for nasty smells, at least for the moment.
My concern in writing this essay is with how discoveries such as germ theory are made and with how unique and new ideas, that underpin, or else are, those discoveries, are spread. I believe this is important. For only if we veraciously know how a great discovery, such as germ theory, is made can we hope to scientifically understand the process of discovery. Consequently, we owe it to the science of the future to collect significant historically valid knowledge of this kind. Such knowledge may help us one day understand how to increase the rate a which other important new discoveries might be made. Unidentified fallacious data will, of course, do the very opposite.
My aim is to inform the pubic and narrower scientific community that - contrary to soft Darwinian knowledge beliefs - hard New Data proves that naturalists, who are known to have influenced and/or facilitated the pre-1858 work of Darwin and Wallace, did, in actual point of disconfirming fact, read (indeed cited in the literature) Patrick Matthew's book containing the full, complete and appreciable prior publication of the hypothesis of natural selection .
Building upon the superb scholarship of the surgeon and leading tissue rejection expert Jim Dempster, it is asserted that Matthew originated the concept of Natural Selection in 1831 to explain the emergence and extinction of species between and after geological catastrophic events. He uniquely named it "the natural process of selection", which he described as a fundamental law of nature. He discussed divergence in terms of diverging ramifications, the mutability of species, rejected miraculous birth of new species following catastrophes, held to a steady state in nature interrupted by catastrophes, understood the importance of the complex multi-level phenomenon of power of occupancy and ecological niches, rejected simple development from nearly-allied species in favour of descent from common ancestor, recognized what constituted a species, recognized the difference between domestic and wild species and saw artificial selection as the key to both discovering and explaining the process of natural selection.
Concisely, the embarrassing science-myth of Darwin's and Wallace's immaculate conceptions of Matthew's prior published hypothesis of natural selection is not only bust, it is blown to smithereens by a bombshell containing many new facts. Alternatively, I am wrong about that and the New Data proves no such thing more likely than not happened at all. The alternative story is that three mutually independent discoveries did occur despite the fact that Matthew's was in the literature 28 years earlier than the other two and despite the following facts:
1. Matthew (1831) was cited, by the friends and associates of Darwin and Wallace pre-1858.
2. Matthew (1831) was cited by Darwin's and Wallace's proven and acknowledged influencers.pre-1858.
3. Matthew (1831) was cited by Wallace's own editor (Selby) and, pre-1858, by Darwin's own publisher of The Origin of Species.
4. Matthew (1831) was reviewed byLoudon FRS ,a member of the Royal Society of Arts, Society of Agriculture,etc in 1832. And in that review of Matthew's book Loudon even wrote that it might have something original to say on "The Origin of Species!". Darwin (1858) chose that exact same phrase as the title of his book that replicated the very ideas Loudon was writing about when he used it. Moreover, Loudon was a very close associate of William Hooker and of Lindley, who was William Hooker's great friend. And William Hooker was father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker. William Hooker was also the mentor and a correspondent of Alfred Wallace who also replicated Matthew's unique discovery, much of his prose, and his use of artificial selection as an analogue to explain natural selection. And yet after Matthew had informed Darwin in 1860, in the pages of the Gardener's Chronicle, that Loudon had reviewed his book, Darwin replied in the same publication in 1860 - via his friend Joseph Hooker's approval and sending-on of his letter to the journal's editor - that apparently no naturalist had read Matthew's book. Darwin lied because he knew Loudon's work well. For example, his notebook of books read and books to read was packed with reference to Loudon's books, journal and magazine articles and many Darwin owned were heavily annotated. Both Darwin and Hooker knew that Loudon was one of the most prominent naturalists in the first half of the 19th century, he even edited and owned theMagazine of Natural History! Loudon had been dead 16 years by the time Darwin wrote his great lie - the same lie his credulous adoration-blinded followers have been parroting these past 155 years!
5. Matthew (1831) was published by the same publishers as a naturalist (David Low) who replicated two of his unique terms and replicated Matthew's original use of artificial selection of many various varieties of trees to explain the survival benefits of natural selection. As Matthew explained it, natural selection led to fewer - but more successful in the wild - varieties of the same species of tree. David Low's work was very carefully read by Darwin, according to Darwin's own notes, and then recommended by him to the Royal Society for the author's useful work on using artificial selection to explain natural selection.
6. Matthew (1831) was very widely and prominently advertised as being on the topic of species. The book was advertised on 3/4 of a page of the Encyclopedia Britannica and cited in an article inside. And it was cited many times by Loudon in a variety of his numerous and prolific botanical and gardening publications.Even Darwin's notebook shows that he held in his hands five publications that either advertised or cited Matthew's book.
7. Matthew (1831; 1839) was cited by Robert Chambers, who went on to write the bestselling book on evolutionary theory - the Vestiges of Creation. Wallace wrote that theVestiges was his greatest influence in seeking to solve the problem of species. Darwin read it avidly and was an associate and correspondent of Chambers. Darwin met Chambers in 1847 and thereafter they engaged in correspondence. In 1847, Chambers gave Darwin a copy of the Vestiges, leading Darwin to write to his friend Joseph Hooker that he knew Chambers was its secret author. In that year, Darwin's great friend and mentor Charles Lyell wrote also that he knew Chambers was the secret author of the Vestiges. Lyell and Chambers met frequently at the Edinburgh Geological Society.
8. Matthew (1831) uniquely called his discovery the "natural process of selection" and Darwin uniquely re-shuffled those exact same four words in 1858 into the only other possible grammatically correct form to recoin the exact same discovery "process of natural selection".
9. Darwin's own "Golden Rule " self-servingly increased the risk of plagiarism of ideas he liked, because it was those he admitted to being less likely to write down.
A small sample of Darwin's and Wallace's plagiarism of Matthew's text, terms and explanatory examples for his unique hypothesis follows
Plagiarism is not simply about directly copying the prose of another, although when that is done – or when the prose is just tweaked here and there - such fraud amounts to theft of wholly unique creativity.
When it comes to theft of discoveries and their associated invented hypotheses, accomplished research fraudsters pass off the discoveries and inventions of others as their own by changing the words in order to misappropriate the ideas and concepts expressed and explained. In the following example of this, we can see how Darwin substituted the word “closely” for Matthew’s above use of “nearly” , thereby replicating the meaning of Matthew’s “species nearly allied” to become the now oft cited Darwinian term “closely allied”. Darwin probably copied this particular re-phrase from Wallace, who actually published it first in his Sarawak paper. Typically, Darwin took the explanations contained in one important paragraph written by Matthew then he split, re-arranged and tweaked its wording.
For example, Darwin writes (1859, p. 15):
‘I may add, that when under nature the conditions of life do change, variations and reversions of character probably do occur; but natural selection, as will hereafter be explained, will determine how far the new characters thus arising shall be preserved.When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants, and compare them with species closely allied together, we generally perceive in each domestic race, as already remarked, less uniformity of character than in true species.’
To reveal the provenance of these two cleverly dispersed selections of plagiarised work we need only switch them back by placing the second above the first (Darwin 1859) thus:
‘When we look to the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants, and compare them with species closely allied together, we generally perceive in each domestic race, as already remarked, less uniformity of character than in true species. I may add, that when under nature the conditions of life do change, variations and reversions of character probably do occur; but natural selection, as will hereafter be explained, will determine how far the new characters thus arising shall be preserved.’
Now compare the above reunited paragraph with Matthew’s original version below, Note that while the words have been substituted, the previously dispersed text on just one page of the Origin now contains, sentence by sentence, exactly the same ideas and even the same reference to both plants and animals that originated in Matthew’s paragraph (Matthew 1831, p.385):
‘From the unremitting operation of this law acting in concert with the tendency which the progeny have to take the more particular qualities of the parents, together with the connected sexual system in vegetables, and instinctive limitation to its own kind in animals, a considerable uniformity of figure, colour, and character, is induced, constituting species; the breed gradually acquiring the very best possible adaptation of these to its condition which it is susceptible of, and when alteration of circumstance occurs, thus changing in character to suit these as far as its nature is susceptible of change.’
If that’s not plagiarism then nothing is! And we can add it as clear evidence to the fact that in place of Matthew’s (1831) unique phrase ‘natural process of selection’, Alfred Wallace (1855), described the same concept making use of two of those four words to write: ‘natural process of gradual extinction and creation of species’. But Darwin (1859), as we know, more brazenly simply four-word-shuffled Matthew’s unique phrase ‘natural process of selection’ into a unique one of his own, which he re-branded the ‘process of natural selection’. And, as if that’s not enough, there are other examples of similarly blatant plagiarism, or else remarkable coincidence. For example, in Naval Timber and Arboriculture (hereafter NTA) Matthew used the unique phrase ‘selection by the law of nature’ and unsurprisingly, we find that on page 224 of the Origin, where Darwin has slyly shortened it to his own – notably once again unique - phrase: ‘selection by nature’.
As Chapter Four of my book Nullius reveals, Professor David Low (1839), was apparently first to second- publish Matthew’s original NTA phrase ‘long-continued selection.’ Of greater importance is the fact that Darwin also used that exact same phrase in his unpublished 1842 and 1844 essays, only Darwin wrote it without the hyphen - just as Matthew first coined it in 1831.
In his position paper entitled "Matthew's Influence" Dr Mike Weale quite rightly questions what it means when we find others who replicated what the data reveals to be apparently unique Matthewisms. One point in the method that he fails to mention, however, is that it focuses only upon those who the data reveals to be apparently "first to replicate" (first to be second) with those apparently unique terms and phrases apparently first used in print by Matthew in 1831.
Mike Weale quite rightly questions the uncertainties that currenlty surround the validity of this brand new BigData faciitated method on the basis that (1) we cannot, surely it seems, have all the relevant literature in the Google Library project, despite the fact that it does contain over 30 million randomly scanned books and documents (twice the number in Cambridge University Library!) and (2) on the basis that search engines are not perfect. However, questions about its validity aside, it is a fact that this new method is a very sensible and logical use of new technology to indicate - in ways never before possible - whomay have read Matthew's 1831 book; those people being apparently first to have gone into print with apparently unique Matthewisms. Why would we not look at this now that - for the first time in history - we can?
On thing that interests me is that there is zero bias in this new method, because the author's introduce themselves to us from among 30 million books and journals - being searched for only on the basis of terms and phrases used 'apparently first' by Matthew and second by them. Note: I don't go witch hunting for any person by name within their known publications. Instead, it's all about the terms and phrases and who turns up to be first to be second with them. The fact that the research finds that so many who did so also knew Darwin and his closest associates Lyell and Hooker raises serious questions and gives us a lot of good clues about Matthewian 'knowledge contamination' sources - with which we might now have reason to justify digging further in the surviving correspondence archives of those people and their friends - people such as Joseph and William Hooker, Charles Lyell, Robert Chambers, William Chambers, Charles Dickens, John Selby, Edward Blyth etc
Dr Weale, in his 'position paper' on Matthew's influence does not address how we might weigh the fact that some authors I have been found by this 'first to be second' method were found also to have subsequently cited Matthew's 1831 book elsewhere pe-1858. Moreover, Dr Weale also does not address the fact out of only 28 people in the entire world found to "be first to be second" that It seems implausible that it would be nothing more than a mere coincidence that Darwin's great friend and mentor Charles Lyell - who played such a pivotal role in guiding and influencing Darwin - should be so closely connected with six out of of the total of a mere 28 individuals in the entire world who we newly know by searching over 30 million books in - Google's mighty library - were apparently the only ones first to be second with apparently unique Matthewisms. This is a hard fact that cannot be rationally rejected out of hand merely on the grounds that we do not know how valid the method is. In short, more research is needed to investigate the validity of the method. And there is plenty of evidence to justify such further research.
To repeat the point already made, that six out of only 28 people in the world found to be first to be second with unique Matthewisms were friends of Darwin's great friend and mentor Lyell seems too many to be mere coincidence. Moreover, that three of those six- namely: Leidy, Conrad and Emmons - were Americans that Lyell met in the USA is surely of great apparent significance and a mere coincidence only beyond the bounds of reasonable probability - in my subjective opinion.
The first to be second method may be dogged by potential inaccuracies in search engine technology and as yet un-scanned publications, but there is no bias in it and, therefore, the significance of which naturalists have been detected by it - among 30 million publication - and the links of those who were first to be second with unique Matthewisms to Darwin and his closest friends cannot be rationally rejected without further research.
On a more general level, once Darwin’s tangled web of deceit is subjected to a high-tech etymological unraveling, we can see, despite his crafty re-phrasing, how an incredible similarity of ideas and choice of words becomes obvious. Matthew even penned the sentence that obviously must have influenced Herbert Spencer’s phrase: ‘survival of the fittest’ which has the exact some meaning:
Matthew’s original version (1831 p.385) of ‘survival of the fittest’ is obviously less elegant but far more accurate than Spencer’s:
‘Nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.’
Moving on, Matthew’s call for a closer examination of the preceding evolutionary “links” in the “chain of life” is replicated by Darwin in the Origin:
Matthew (1831, p.386) wrote:
‘In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments.’
Darwin (1859, p. 302) replicated:
‘…we have no right to expect to find in our geological formations, an infinite number of those fine transitional forms, which on my theory assuredly have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life. We ought only to look for a few links, some more closely, some more distantly related to each other; and these links, let them be ever so close, if found in different stages of the same formation, would, by most palaeontologists, be ranked as distinct species.’
In light of Matthew’s publication of his hypothesis of natural selection, Darwin, in his replication of it, was even so bold as to follow it logically to the exact same natural conclusion as Matthew’ s mockery of the Christian notion of miraculous multiple creations.
On this subject, the Originator wrote elegantly of the unlikelihood of ‘repeated miraculous creation’ of new species (Matthew 1831. p.381):
‘We are therefore led to admit either of a repeated miraculous creation; or of a power of change, under a change of circumstances, to belong to living organized matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life, which appears to form superior. The derangements and changes in organized existence, induced by a change of circumstance from the interference of man, affording us proof of the plastic quality of superior life, and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in the different epochs, though steady in each tend strongly to heighten the probability of the latter theory.’
The plodding Replicator crudely aped Matthew’s jibe (Darwin 1859, p. 483):
‘These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues? Do they believe that at each supposed act of creation one individual or many were produced?’
Matthew's Unique Artificial Selection Analogue to Explain Natural Selection
Matthew (1831 pp. 307-308)) wrote:
‘The use of the infinite seedling varieties in the families of plants, even in those in a state of nature, differing in luxuriance of growth and local adaptation, seems to be to give one individual (the strongest best circumstance-suited) superiority over others of its kind around, that it may, by overtopping and smothering them, procure room for full extension, and thus affording, at the same time, a continual selection of the strongest, best circumstance suited for reproduction. 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 difference in varieties, particularly in the more domesticated kinds…'
It is obvious why Matthew, the farming botanist and 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 said, 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 it 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.
Some Darwinists, one or two of whom I have named and shamed for their unethical or desperately pseudo-scholarly behavior, 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 on the topic and, more specifically, I recommend myRationalWiki essay ).
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.
Before reading what follows, it is important that you engage with me in seeking to understand how unique ideas - perhaps at times just the germs of those ideas - are transmitted from their originator's published work into the minds of those who come to replicate them. Thinking about how this might happen is, I think, important in all cases of claimed independent replication of prior published work.
A typology of possible routes of 'knowledge contamination'
As the above typology reveals, it would be unrealistically simplistic to believe that Matthewian knowledge contamination might have happened solely by way of Darwin or Wallace merely reading the odd replicated phrase, term or explanatory example in the literature that had been put there by others who we newly know read Matthew's book, or more likely than not read it according to current etymological knowledge of who was apparently first to coin and apparently "first to be second" with specific terms, phrases and explanatory examples. Of course, some iota of Matthew's ideas might have penetrated the pre-1858 brains of Darwin or Wallace in that way, but, perhaps more importantly we cannot know now that those who we now newly know did read Matthew's book did not discuss it orally, or in lost correspondence (of which there is much), with the highly clubbable Darwin and Wallace. There is nothing unusual in such a thing. What else were the clubs and societies and dinner parties attended by Darwin - and those we know read Matthew - for if not almost exclusively for the very purpose of exchanging new and unusual ideas in a social setting?
What follows is an excerpt from within Chapter Four of my e-book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret (Sutton 2014).
Please Note: full Harvard style references to the works cited below are in the book.
Part 1: Who Read NTA
Before Darwin’s publication of the Origin of Species, the people that we know for sure read Matthew's (1831) Naval Timber and Arboriculture (NTA), apart from Matthew and his publishers, are those who reviewed or cited it. The first known member of this group was the famous botanist, garden designer and editor, John Claudius Loudon, who went on to write a highly favourable review of the book (Loudon 1832) where he highlighted the originality of Matthew’s hypothesis on the problem of species. Loudon then went on to cite NTA in several other important publications.
List 1 is a non-definitive record of who we now know read NTA, because they actually cited the book. This list includes anonymous authors. While it remains possible that one or more of these anonymous authors might be the same person, or that one of the named reviewers may elsewhere have anonymously reviewed the book, in absence of any such evidence that they did so, it is presumed that they are different individuals, which seems, intuitively, more likely.
List 1 (From Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret 2014 (with updates)
Those who/that cited Matthew (1831) before Darwin's (1858) and Wallace's (1858) plagiarism of Matthew's thoery in the Linnean Journal, where they further stole his unique terminology and explanatory examples, and before Darwin's plagiarisng 'Origin of Species' (1859)
1. Matthew's (1831) Edinburgh publisher Adam Black
2. Matthew's (1831) London publisher Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green
3. The Farmer’s Journal – Currently unknown reviewer (1831)
4. The Perthshire Courier - Currently unknown reviewer (1831)
5. The Elgin Courier - Currently unknown reviewer (18311)
6. The Country Times - Currently unknown reviewer (1831)
7. The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine (1831) – unknown reviewer
8. The Edinburgh Literary Journal – unknown reviewer (1831)
9. The Metropolitan – unknown reviewer (1831)
10. John Claudius Loudon (1832) (And cited many times by Loudon thereafter. All refs in 'Nullius').
11. Robert Chambers (1832)
12. The Quarterly Review (here) Unknown reviewer on topic of dry rot. (Newly added here 14th March 2021)
13. John Murray II in (1833)
14. John Murray III (1833) personally or by association – via the same publishing house as John Murray II
15. Edmund Murphy (1834)
16. Thomas Horton James (1839) [Newly added: Discovered May 2020] (and here)
17. Gavin Cree (1841)
18. John William Carleton (1841)
19. Cuthbert William Johnson (1842)
20. Prideaux John Selby (Selby 1842)
21. The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838) (1842) – Anonymous
22. Publishers - Cradock and Co. (1843)3 in ‘British Forest Trees’
23. Henry Stephens (1851)
24. John. P. Norton (1851)4 (Co-published with Stevens above)
25. Levi Woodbury (1832) (1833) (1852)
26. William Lauder Lindsay (1852) [Newly added: Discovered Jan 2019] (and here)
27. William Jameson (1853)
28. Wyatt Papworth (1858)
I would prefer to conservatively claim that the certain figure of those citing Matthew is 24 and not all 25 in the above list, firstly because I think there is sufficient reason to doubt that Carleton read it, since he merely reproduced text, within which Selby cites the book. And Carelton was actually citing Selby. It is important also to note that it is either Darwin’s publisher, John Murray III, or his father who cited NTA. This fact, combined with Murray the third’s otherwise strange insistence that Darwin explain exactly where he got the term ‘natural selection’ from (see Darwin 1859a) suggests that even Darwin’s publisher was fully aware of Matthew’s distinctive phrase and hypothesis of the ‘natural process of selection.’ It seems rather likely that Murray III was concerned that Darwin had, nine times in the Origin, distinctively and unimaginatively shuffled Matthew’s phrase to ‘process of natural selection,’ in order to re-name the exact same discovery.
As List 1 reveals, we now know that, contrary to the current myth, which is being influentially disseminated by Richard Dawkins (2010), Michael Shermer (2002), and other famous Darwinists of international standing, that many people did read Matthew’s ideas, because we now know 24 actually went so far as to cite NTA in the published literature.
Most importantly, seven of those who cited NTA were naturalists. The seven, in date order of their citing of Matthew’s book, are: John Loudon (1832), Robert Chambers (1832), Edmund Murphy (1834), Cuthbert Johnson (1842), Prideaux John Selby (1842), John Norton (1851) and William Jameson (1853). Moreover, as Figure 2 depicts, four of the seven – Loudon, Chambers, Johnson Selby and Jameson - were part of Darwin’s social circle and three of them – Selby, Johnson and Chambers - were in his personal inner circle because they were directly associated to him through their mutual membership of scientific associations, including senior capacities at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Linnean Society, and also by way of the fact that Darwin’s father had been his house guest (Selby), being neighbours in Bromley, members of the Royal Society, and the fact that Darwin corresponded with his brother (Johnson), and being 100 per cent proven to have met with him alone, corresponded with him and received as a present from him a copy if his top-secretly authored, heretical work on evolution – ‘The Vestiges of Creation’ (Chambers).
Contrary to currently accepted knowledge, other naturalists, including at least three known personally to Darwin and Wallace, did have pre-Origin knowledge of Matthew’s discovery. Moreover, those three naturalists were at the centre of Darwin’s and Wallace’s involvement in the field of organic evolution. The most influential papers of Blyth, a naturalist who Darwin (1861a) admitted had served him as a most valuable informant and influencer, were edited and published by John Loudon, who read and cited NTA (Loudon 1832) pre-Origin. Robert Chambers (1832), who both Darwin and Wallace freely admitted was a great influence on their work, read and cited NTA pre-Origin. Matthew’s prior discovery of natural selection undoubtedly directly influenced Chambers to write the Vestiges, and from that cause can we be certain that Matthew did, at the very least, indirectly influence Darwin and Wallace to find further evidence to support Matthew’s hypothesis and turn it into a theory. Wallace’s (1855) Sarawak paper’s editor and publisher, Prideaux John Selby (1842), read and cited NTA thirteen years earlier. Moreover, the well-connected naturalist William Jardine had the book in his possession for some time because he purchased Selby’s copy (see Jackson 1992).
The fact that Loudon, Chambers and Selby, three out of only seven naturalists known to date to have definitely read NTA pre-Origin, played such dynamic roles at the very core of influence and facilitation of Darwin’s and Wallace’s published work on natural selection can have – beyond seeking to explain it away as a coincidence upon coincidence upon coincidence pile-up – only one rational explanation. Namely, that it is now established beyond any reasonable doubt that Matthew’s discovery influenced both Darwin and Wallace. This finding alone is an absolute bombshell for the history of biology. Matthew’s prior-published discovery and his influence on others undoubtedly fulfills all the conditions, protocols and conventions of scientific priority, thereby satisfying all required criteria for Matthew to be awarded full priority over Darwin and Wallace. But there are many more new discoveries to unveil before to this story is done.
Counting its publishers, who also advertised its contents, this newly discovered data reveals that 24 people most certainly read NTA, either because they cited it either under their own name, or else anonymously under that of a publisher or periodical.
Crucially, six of those who cited NTA specifically drew attention to Matthew’s discovery of the natural process of selection on species. That particular group of six are:
- Anon – Edinburgh Literary Review
- Currently unknown – The Elgin Courier
- John Loudon - Publisher, naturalist, botanist, garden designer and polymath
- Anon. United Service Journal
- Adam Black – Matthew’s Edinburgh Publisher
- Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green – Matthew’s London Publisher
At least six individuals then were so sufficiently cognizant of Matthew’s discovery of the hypothetical principle of natural selection that they either went to the trouble of advertising the book on that particular aspect or else commented on the subject of Matthew’s distinctive ideas in this specific area. And this happened some 27 years before Wallace’s and Darwin’s Linnean papers, which replicated it, failed to make any known immediate impression on the scientific audience present at their reading. Most tellingly because those present at the reading of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1868 failed to notice that anything profoundly important or distinctive had been said on the subject of species. At which juncture it should not pass unremarked that the only recorded views of those present at the Linnean debacle were those of Haughton of Dublin, who remarked (Hindle 1958): ‘All that was new was false, and what was true was old.’
Haughton’s views have been interpreted by Darwinists as typical of the unimaginative ignorance of 19th century naturalists on the subject. An alternative possibility, which has never been considered before, is that Haughton - like some other naturalists we now know of - had read NTA. Further research into Haughton, and others present at the debacle, might possibly produce some valuable intelligence on this possibility.Alternatively it may just have been an apocryphal knee-jerk-rejecting Semmelweis reflex to some otherwise alarming new discovery.
The fact that more of those, who we now know read NTA, did not publish any thoughts they might have had on Matthew’s hypothesis, has, at least on the face of it, two main explanations: (1) either those who read it did not understand, or appreciate the significance of what they were reading – or else (2) they thought it plainly heretical and, therefore, an impossible explanation. In fact, once historical accounts of 19th century scientific conventions are taken into account, the most likely explanation is rather more complex than this simple binary. That explanation is necessarily discussed in detail towards the end of this chapter. Before then, however, it is essential to examine more results of the investigation of Darwin’s excuse.
The discovery of this new evidence, which absolutely refutes the current rationale for illegitimately denying Matthew a place as an immortal great thinker of science, does not end here. There is yet another way to use ID to detect even more people who read and were definitely influenced by Matthew’s hypothesis. Those people, to whom we turn next, were apparently so influenced by NTA that they published unique phrases from it. By so doing, these authors were apparently first to replicate those Matthewisms by ‘second-publishing’ them.
Who were the first authors that were apparently first to be second in publishing unique natural selection phrases from NTA?
Of the 30+ million documents Google has so far scanned and uploaded to the Internet, the vast majority are out of copyright. Since my investigation of Darwin’s claim to have independently discovered natural selection was predominantly focused upon works published more than 150 years ago, it is this mammoth sample of the literature that I spent several months searching through.
Not every out of copyright publication has been uploaded to the internet yet. But an army of volunteers is currently sweeping through many major university libraries in the US and UK, scanning and uploading everything they are legally able, from the 1930s backwards to before the 10th century.
With such a large sample of the out of copyright literature now uploaded, the ID way to discover who almost certainly read a publication is to go through it and simply, subjectively, eyeball very single term and phrase that looks like it might be exclusive to the publication you are concerned with. Once candidate terms and phrases are sampled in this way they can then subjected to the ID process, which was explained fully in Chapter Two. The method is akin to those very simple word search puzzles.
Likely looking phrases were collected from just one such reading of the natural selection relevant text in Matthew’s book. This same text can be found in Appendix One.
The ID process revealed many of the phrases found in this way were, apparently, coined by Matthew in NTA, and integral to his natural selection hypothesis. They were, therefore, all subject to a second round of ID to see who was apparently first to be second to deploy the in print.
Since the ID method has identified many naturalists in Darwin’s close social and professional network, who more likely than not read NTA, the onus on disproving the veracity of the ‘First to be Second’ hypothesis lies now with those who wish to challenge its findings and my conclusions. Since the ID method is based upon the analysis of millions of scanned and uploaded documents, one way to challenge it is to discover any, so far undiscovered, pre-NTA publications where the phrases occur. Only two other ways exist: prove with some other evidence that its premise is completely unsound, or seriously questionable, or else do the same with logic, reason and evidence to show that is not capable of allowing us to accurately discover who did first and was first to be second to publish a given word, term or phrase.
One important possibility should be considered by anyone quite rightfully seeking to challenge the unknowable reliability of ID regarding detecting who was first to be second to replicate a unique phrase, which is that this exact same criticism surely implies also that ID cannot reliably find all those who actually cited NTA. And that means the current count of 24, including seven naturalists, is an undercount. If it is an undercount then yet more in Darwin’s inner circle who indisputably read NTA are likely to exist, which means that further incriminating discoveries will be made just as soon as the search engine improves, any currently ‘hidden’ important books are scanned and the paper bound archives of Darwin’s friends and prolific correspondents are explored for evidence on this particular question.
I very much doubt that I have found them all, and I might even have missed the most important ones. However, at the time of writing, 198 apparently NTA-coined phrases have been discovered as having been reproduced in the literature by different authors after 1st January 1831 and prior to publication of the Origin in 1859.
To revisit one important caveat outlined in Chapter One, it is anticipated that the current ‘Googlebug’ that I discovered in my research, which prevents the ID method from detecting exact words, terms or phrases if they are precisely enclosed in “double inverted comas”, will soon be remedied. However, because of that bug it is necessary be clear that, at least at the time of writing, the First to be Second Hypothesis is based on the premise that whoever was first to coin any of the terms and phrases examined in this book did not go into print with them in double inverted commas. In other words, where phrases and terms have been identified as being coined by Matthew, it is assumed that no one published the same terms or phrases earlier and enclosed them in inverted commas.
The element of uncertainty that will always exist regarding the possibility that one, or indeed all, of these allegedly Matthewist phrases might at some future date prove to have been published pre-NTA, is effectively no different than the ever lasting possibility that we may one day find disconfirming evidence for evolution in the fossil record. Indeed, it is the fact of its potential capability of being completely disconfirmed, and impossible to vary if disconfirmed, that makes the First to Second Publish hypothesis a promising scientific explanation for Darwin’s supposedly ‘independent’ replication of Matthew’s hypothesis. Deutsch (2012) explains that these two essential qualities - refutability and invariability – are essential characteristics of all good scientific explanations.
Some initial confirmatory evidence for the validity of the First to Second-Publish hypothesis - that those who first second-published unique phrases from NTA pre-Origin did read the book - comes by way of the fact that prior to 1859 the naturalists David Low and Ebenezer Emmons were twice apparently first to be second with exclusive Matthewisms. The agriculturalist Cuthbert Johnson, was apparently first to be second with ‘adapted to prosper’ and then actually cited Matthew in a separate publication to the one where he replicated that phrase. Contrariwise, Robert Chambers, author of the hugely influential (see Millhauser 1959) pre-cursor to Darwin’s Origin - ‘The Vestiges of Creation’ - cited NTA in 1832. Then, 27 years later, in 1859, he was apparently first to second-publish Matthew’s unique phrase ‘natural process of selection’ in his review of the Origin.
It is necessary at this stage to further admit to the possibility that one or more of the 28 authors, out of the list of 30 in List Two, might not have read the book but could have simply heard the phrases spoken by others who had read it. Furthermore, completely independently of Matthew, one or all might have created independently the phrases they published after their original coining by Matthew. However, in the cases of Low, Evans, Johnson and Chambers, this seems highly improbable. Where other first to be second phrase replicators are concerned, we currently have no way of knowing the probability of independent replication occurring.
It is important to be clear that the necessarily intuitive assumption that the probability of merely hearing a phrase and replicating it, or of independent identical phrase coinage, is significantly lower than the probability that the replicators read and then copied the phrases directly from NTA. This assumption seems all the more intuitively reasonable in the case of those authors who were naturalists, agriculturalists and theologians.
The point must be repeated, in order to be adequately emphasized, at this juncture that whatever members of the scientific community and other readers of this book decide about the veracity of the First to Second Publish hypothesis, and the assumptions on which it is based, the ID method has indisputably detected 24 people who actually cited Matthew’s book and that, contrary to the current ‘knowledge myth’ started by Darwin that no naturalist read NTA, seven of those who cited it were indisputably men that Darwin would have called naturalists and three of those were his direct personal associates.
It must not go unremarked, however, that out of the 24 who we can be absolutely 100 per cent certain read NTA, because they cited it, only one – the famous Robert Chambers - can be absolutely 100 per cent proven (proven by archived correspondence) - to have met or corresponded with Darwin. Since so many have gone missing, we should not, however, believe that Darwin’s letters record his entire social activities and friendship networks. For example, NTA citer, Selby, in particular, enjoyed a considerable extent of professional involvement with Darwin’s best friends and mentors, Lyell, Joseph Hooker, William Hooker, Huxley and Strickland. Given that Darwin’s father was a guest at Selby’s house and the fact that Selby and Darwin had mutual membership of several scientific committees, it seems highly unlikely they never met or corresponded.
Dawkins (2010 p.213) tells us of Wallace that: ‘His ideas were remarkably similar to Darwin’s, and there is no doubt that Wallace arrived at them independently.’ Dawkins is very wrong to write such a thing, because in human relations, at least as understood by science, there is always room for doubt. Dawkins himself has no doubt only because he does not, apparently it seems to me, dare to examine the evidence that Wallace might have read NTA.
If Wallace read NTA and Darwin read NTA before Wallace sent Darwin his draft Linnean paper, then that would explain why Wallace’s and Darwin’s work was so otherwise unexplainably similar. And it would prove Wallace a science fraudster for claiming to have discovered organic evolution independently of anyone else.
Aside from the remarkable similarities between Wallace’s Sarawak paper and NTA, which are presented in Chapter Five, there is plenty of room for doubt that Wallace arrived independently at the same ideas as Matthew. For a start, the fact that William Jardine purchased for Selby a copy of NTA (Jackson 1992), that Selby then cited it,before editing and publishing Wallace’s (1855) Sarawak paper, which is Wallace's very first paper on evolution, creates massive doubt that Wallace arrived at his ideas independently, because this newly discovered fact brings Wallace, most incriminatingly, right into the epicenter of Matthew’s orbit - albeit via Wallace’s immediate scientific associates who so greatly facilitated his career as an evolutionist.
While those wishing to defend Wallace as a new patron saint of Darwinism might desperately argue that it is not Wallace’s fault who read NTA, they should consider the fact that, just like Darwin, it is entirely his fault for poor scholarship by way of replicating the ideas of another without attribution if he never read it when other naturalists he knew had been able to find, read and cite it. This one newly discovered and irrefutable fact alone means that the current illicit excuse for awarding Wallace priority over Matthew is as much newly refuted as the claim to award priority to Darwin.
Moreover, just like Darwin, the more people that Wallace knew who read NTA the more likely the fact that he plagiarized it. Contrary to Dawkins’ unevidenced claim about there being no doubt that Wallace arrived at his ideas independently of anyone, it is actually beyond all reasonable doubt that he copied them from Matthew, because not only did Wallace know two senior naturalists who read NTA, and not only did those two publish Wallace’s first paper on evolution, Wallace wrote remarkably like Matthew, just as Darwin did – which is a fact revealed with multiple evidences in the next chapter.
All of these findings that others in Darwin’s network read NTA are catastrophic disconfirming evidence for the completely unfounded, and anyhow illicit, Darwinist claim that their namesake should be awarded priority over Matthew for committing a weirdly unexplainable, supposedly independent, replication of the Originator’s published discovery of the hypothesis of natural selection. Any argument that biased Darwinists might next propose to claim that not a single one of these fellow naturalists in Darwin’s close social circle shared with each other and with him their knowledge of Matthew’s hypothesis of ‘the natural process of selection’ is beyond highly improbable, its completely ludicrous - particularly so, since it was no secret that Darwin had for years been plodding along gathering evidences on the species problem. In light of the new evidence, we can only rationally conclude that Darwin was either a crook or a schnook. And the same goes for Wallace. If you had to choose one or the other, surely all the evidence suggests that neither was a schnook.
ID analysis found that Matthew appears to have coined at least 198 original phrases in Matthew's 1831 book. Thirty (15%) of those phrases were first replicated pre-Origin. In date order, List 2 contains the first to be second, pre-Origin, Matthewian phrase-replicating authors identified to date. Chambers, who actually cited Matthew’s book, is not included in this list because he was apparently first to second-publish Matthew’s phrase after the Origin had been published. Whereas, in this particular part of the histographic analysis of Matthew (1831), we are interested solely in pre-Origin - i.e. pre-1859 phrase replicators.
List 2
- 1832 – Mudie: ‘rectangular branching’
- 1833 – Ellerby: ‘plants so far asunder’
- 1835 – Main: ‘luxuriant growing trees’
- 1834 - Conrad: ‘admixture of species’
- 1834 – Roget: ‘living aggregates’
- 1834 – Low: ‘long continued selection’
- 1836 – Rafinesque: ‘evinced in the genus’
- 1837 – Wilson: ‘threatened ascendency’
- 1837 – Anonymous: ‘nature’s own rearing’
- 1837 – Dovaston: ‘sport in infinite varieties’
- 1838 - Anonymous translator: ‘portion of the surface of our planet’
- 1840 – Buel: ‘infirm progeny’
- 1840 – Swackhamer: ‘beat off intruders’
- 1841 – Johnson: ‘adapted to prosper’
- 1841 – Hill: ‘deeper richer soil’
- 1842 – Selby: ‘greater power of occupancy’
- 1844 – Low: ‘overpowering the less’
- 1846 – Emmons: ‘habits of varieties’
- 1846 – Alabama Supreme Court: ‘Infirmity of their condition’
- 1848: - Charnock: ‘stiffest and most obdurate’
- 1849 – Emmons: ‘deteriorated by culture’
- 1852 – Wilkin: ‘figure is best accommodated’
- 1853 - Andrews ‘impressions and habits acquired’
- 1854 – Mure: ‘dogmatical classification’
- 1855 – Fishbourne: ‘power to permeate’
- 1855 – Laycock: ‘mental or instinctive powers’
- 1856 – Gazlay: ‘adaptation to condition’
- 1858 - Powell: ‘restricted adaptation’
- 1858 – Floy: ‘law manifest in nature’
- 1858 – Leidy: ‘impressions in insects’
Because David Low, and Ebenezer Emmons were both twice apparently first to be second with un-cited replications of Matthewisms, this list of 30 earliest replications of Matthew’s apparently exclusive phrases represents 28 individuals.
Including Matthew’s two publishers, the first systematic ID review of the published literature on Matthew's 1831 book reveals, from List 1 + List 2 - allowing for the overlap of Selby and Johnson (who both cited and first replicated Matthewisms), and the fact that Carleton (1841) in List 1 may not have read NTA – that we can be reasonably certain that, in addition to the 24 (List 1) who definitely did read it, that a further 28 individuals are more likely than not to have read the book. A total of 52 people might, therefore, be said to represent the currently known diverging ramifications of NTA.
Of this total of 52 individuals, 19 are known to have been socially connected to Darwin, either directly or through being close friends and/or associates of one or more of his personal friends, mentors acquaintances and correspondents: Chambers, Lyell, Strickland, Huxley, Blyth and the Hookers - William and Joseph. These associations are explained in detail in this chapter and are presented diagrammatically in Figure 2.
Of the 30 replicated phrases so far discovered, 56.6 % (17) were first replicated by naturalists who never cited Matthew' 1831 book in the publication in which they replicated it. This means that 8.6 per cent of all the apparently original Matthew phrases so far discovered were first replicated by naturalists who failed to cite Matthew. Those phrase replicating naturalists are:
- Robert Mudie
- James Main
- Timothy Conrad
- Paul Roget
- John Wilson
- Constantine Rafinesque
- John Dovaston
- Jesse Buel
- Cuthbert Johnson
- David Low
- Ebenezer Emmons
- Simon Wilkin
- Thomas Laycock
- Baden Powell
- Joseph Leidy
The number of naturalists in this list is 15 and not 17 because both Low and Emmons each replicated two different inimitable Matthewisms in two different publications.
Adding these 15 naturalists, who we can confidently assert more likely than not read NTA, to the seven who we know read it because they cited it, gives us 22 naturalists, 19 of whom were closely connected to Darwin.
Most remarkably, 12 (80%) of the 15 phrase replicating naturalists who were discovered by the ID research method as first to be second with unique Matthewisms from NTA were part of Darwin’s close social network (see Figure 2) – defined on the basis that they either met and corresponded with him directly or else they did so with those in his inner circle of friends, confidants, prolific informants, mentors, committee members and/or correspondents: Robert Chambers, Charles Lyell, William Hooker, Joseph Hooker, Hugh Strickland and Edward Blyth.
It is important to repeat here the point made in Chapter One, that these 15 naturalists were not first identified as being professionally and related in some way to Darwin and then scrutinized to see if they had replicated any distinctive Matthewisms. On the contrary, this was no confirmation-bias informed witch hunt. Smoked-out by the ID method using Google alone, these men were compelled to introduce themselves to us. They were technologically forced-out from among the millions of scanned publications in the Google Library Project.
--- Excerpt from Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret - ENDS ----
A glimpse behind the curtain: the case of Professor David Low
To examine just one example, amongst the many listed naturalists in Nullius, who more likely than not read Matthew's book, what follows is a little of what we know about David Low .
Professor Davis Low was apparently the first to twice replicate apparently unique Matthewisms. And it should go without saying that new and dis-confirming data for the current discovery that Matthew was first to coin these terms and phrases, and that Low was first to replicate them, may be discovered. To date, no such discovery has been made. This is how science proceeds. As David Deutsch (2012) teaches us, good explanations are always capable of being refuted and are hard to vary once refuted.
The highly esteemed science historian Loren Eiseley wrote a famous Darwin celebratory book in 1958 , but as his research deepened he became convinced that Darwin was a downright plagiarist (Eiseley 1981 ). Eiseley was absolutely convinced that Darwin plagiarized Blyth's two early papers. However, he did not make the connection, as I uniquely have, that Loudon (who cited Matthew in 1832) edited both of Blyth's early papers.
Eiseley was also convinced that Darwin's (1844 - private essay) replication of Matthew's artificial selection analogous explanatory example of the inferiority of trees selected in nurseries, compared to those selected naturally in nature, was taken from Matthew's unique arboricultural expert and unique use of that example to explain natural selection in his book of 1831 . However, what Eiseley also never discovered - as once again I uniquely have - is that David Low had most definitely read Matthew's book because he took so much unique content from it, including unique Matthewian terms, and was first to replicate (without citation) Matthew's unique prior-published, artificial selection, nursery grown trees analogue, in his own book of 1844 .
Most crucially, Darwin knew Low and recommended his book (successfully) to the Royal Society - precisely because of his work that stressed the lessons to be had from studying artificial selection. Moreover, Low - a fellow of the Royal Socety of Edinburgh - was closely networked with both Robert Chambers and Prideaux John Selby - who had both cited Matthew (1831) pre-1858 .
Darwin's far from comprehensive notebooks of books he wanted to read and books he read have no record of Low's books that contain two apparently unique Matthewisms, which Low was apparently first to replicate. The terms in question are "Long continued selection" (In Low's 1834 book ' The Elements of Practical Agriculture') and "Overpowering the less" (In Low's 1842 'On landed property and the economy of estates'). However those notebooks do record the following from Darwin: "Advertised. David Low “Treatise on Domestic Animals”; also Illustrations of the Domestic animals of Gt. Britain [D. Low 1842]. must be read carefully." Strangely, or not as the case may be, given that he recommended Low to the Royal Society, there is also no correspondence to or from Low in the much decimated Darwin correspondence archive.
Professor David Low and Matthew were Perth Academy school mates. Low died in May 1859, six months before Darwin's Origin of Species was first published. He is buried in relative obscurity .
Darwin also replicated the unique Matthewism 'long continued selection' that Low earlier replicated without citation (see Sutton 2104 ); only Low hyphenated it, whereas Darwin used it just as Matthew did when he first coined it in 1831. Low and Matthew shared the same London publisher - Longman and Co (e.g. here ) and Low also shared Matthew'sBlack's of Edinburgh publisher . Indeed, Matthew's 1831 book was published by Blacks of Edinburgh and Longman and Co of London - exactly as was Low's (1847) fifth edition of The Elements of Practical Agriculture.
If all of that happened, under those circumstance of close social networking by David Low, with those who actually cited Matthew - who incidentally knew Darwin very well and influenced him both directly (Chambers) and indirectly (Selby), with the same publishers who printed Matthew's and then Low's words and advertised them prolifically, without Matthewian knowledge contamination passing to Darwin pre-1858 through such multiple such "knowledge contamination zones" and through his direct "knowledge-contact" with Low through his admitted reading of Low's work, then surely it would not be irrational to claim that a supernatural miracle really did happen.
If not directly from reading Matthew's 1831 book (which he never admitted to doing pre 1860) or through reading Low (as he admitted he did do pre 1858), or through his networking with Low's friends are we expected to credulously believe that Charles Darwin somehow managed to replicated Matthew's artificial selection analogue of trees raised in nurseries without Matthew's prior-published influence?
You have just seen the evidence for Matthew's influence on Darwin via David Low. The evidence for Matthew's influence on Darwin via Robert Mudie through Edward Blyth repicating Matthew's powerful Artificial versus Natural Selection Explanatory Analogy of Differences is even more powerful. Visit the "Matthew's Analogy"page onPatrickmatthew.com for links to the hard evidence.
To believe that the evidence of Matthew's influence over Darwin is weak as Dr Mike Weale (2015) argues in his Linnean Society Paper on the importance of Matthew, we must simply believe - in addition to believing that none who Darwin knew who read Matthew's book, and cited it pre-1858, it told Darwin about it - that Darwin merely coincidentally replicated both Matthew's prior published hypothesis and his prior published unique and most powerful analogy that explains it. And we must, therefore, believe that he did it all independently of Matthew, despite the fact that Low (who Darwin knew) and Blyth (who Darwin met and admitted was his great influencer and prolific correspondent) replicated Matthew's analogy - Blyth perhaps getting it from Robert Mudie who was first to be second (1832) with Matthew's unique term 'rectangular branching'. Mudie was born in Matthew's county (Forfarshire in Scotland) and was first to replicate Matthew's unique analogy.Moreover, Mudie was a friend and twice co-author with Blyth. That is hardly "weak evidence" for Matthew's influence on Darwin. What it is is weak evidence for mere coincidence in Darwin's replication of Matthew's (1831) original ideas. So powerful, in fact, is Matthew's (1831) unique explanatory analogy of Artificial versus Natural Selection, which he created to explain his unique discovery of the most important scientific hypothesis of all time that Wallace (1858) replicated it in his Ternate paper and Darwin (1859, p. 7) used it in the very opening words of The Origin of Species:
'When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.’
If that's "weak evidence" of the Scot, Matthew's, influence on Darwin then I'm an anemic Scotsman, despite being born in England, and having a good iron level in my blood!
To compound my defense of the "first to be second" method, which first brought David Low and Robert Mudie to my attention - is it or is it not significant that only 28 authors were detected to have been apparently first to be second with apparently unique Matthewisms? That many of the 28 can be shown to have been in Darwin's social circle or proven to have direct contact with him (see Nullius for all the details ) is likely to be more than coincidence. That Mudie, who is proven to have influenced Blyth, who is proven to have known and influenced Darwin, and that Low, who is proven to have influenced Darwin, are among the 28, seems beyond mere coincidence. If it's of any use as a future benchmark in ground breaking research of this kind, Mudie and Low comprise seven per cent of the sample detected.
Did Charles Robert Darwin wear a tin-foil hat to prevent knowledge contamination?
Perhaps in answer to all of this unique dis-confirming evidence, Darwinists will next be publishing papers claiming that a bearded sky dwelling god intelligently designed Darwin's brain to work completely independently of all such newly discovered highly-likely influences from Matthew? Of course, the bearded granter of such Darwinist-only "special privilege miracles'" would have similarly made an exception for Darwin's proven influencer David Low, thereby making Low's replications of his former classmate Matthew's two unique terms and nursery trees analogue into miraculous immaculate conceptions. And we must not forget that Wallace must also have been granted the "gods" special privileges.
Unfortunately for Christians, and spiritualists, Wallace did not claim an angel came to him in his claimed most remarkable Eureka moment of, unique in the history of scientific discovery, malarial fever cognitive enhancement.
However, truth really is stranger than fiction in Wallace's story, because Darwinists really do believe that Malaria caused him to make a cognitive independent discovery of the theory his editor an publisher, Selby, had already read.
Darwin could only say that he had no Eureka moment, the finch beaks science myth had yet to be created by his worshiping Darwinists the following century. Darwin, in fact, admitted only vaguely that he found the theory of natural selection somehow by some mysterious process of unique synthesis from literature
But wait, there is hope yet for Creationists, perhaps there is a gap in our knowledge? Perhaps both Darwin and Wallace had Eureka moments in a stable on a farm? Was an angel involved there? Alternatively, maybe no god intervened. Perhaps a great wizard or witch did it all instead? Perhaps the Wiccans, Pagans, Druids and Voodoo priests will join in with the next great science myth act?
Poking such fun at Darwinist's for their belief in miracles is one thing, but veracity in the history of scientific discovery is an important matter for human progress. To me it seems far more likely than not that Matthew's work influenced David Low to write about the importance of all kinds of artificial selection as an analogue of the importance of what happens under natural selection. And it was for Low's work, on that very specific topic, that Darwin recommend Low's book to the Royal Society. In sum, Matthew influenced Low with an important keystone building brick from his hypothesis. Low bought that very essential and unique brick and used it in the construction of his own work. Low was then noted for that work, but not least for the fact it contained Matthew's special keystone brick. Darwin then bought Matthew's brick from Low's book and used it in the building of his own notable work. The point being, Matthew, the first and only originator of the hypothesis of natural selection, is shown to have a direct line of provenance, through Low to Darwin. Most importantly, Professor David Low is just one such example.
My book, Nullius is jam-packed with other examples of how Matthew's keystone ideas permeated the work of 19th century gentlemen of science and so got into the brains of both Darwin and Wallace and into many in their network of associates, mentors and good friends.
I am no physicist, or laterally thinking meteorologist, but I suspect such a scientist might ably demonstrate - through what we now newly know of the literature record - how Matthew's unique and important ideas hatched out of his book like so many butterflies, beat their beautiful wings, and so contributed to the more likely than not effects, of what chaos theory explains, on Darwin and Wallace and the rest of us.
How do we know to what extent, if not to the letter, that the advice or warnings a person might write are followed? How do we know how much of a complex idea a reader of text apprehended if they never published the fact that they apprehended it? The answer is that we don't. But we do know that words, when believed, and even when not believed, can influence others to pay heed and to take physical actions.
When Matthew predicted the Tay Bridge disaster, which happened ten years to the day he wrote his Demonic Eels warning letter, he was cruelly mocked before the disaster happened. He was mocked in the press and mocked within a book celebrating the bridge, which later collapsed just as Matthew predicted. Perhaps some passengers were not on the train that fell into the river when the Tay Bridge collapsed because they paid heed to what Matthew wrote? Who knows? The point is we don't know. But the point is that we do know human actions, via publishing words to reveal ideas, have consequences regarding (1) what others write and (2) what others do.
The power of words to influence human actions is by no means an unknown phenomenon. It is why many people have been burned at the stake, locked up or gone into hiding. So powerful are published words in this regard that we have many laws to regulate them. Why? Because once loose in the environment they can cause unpleasant or otherwise chaos causing shockwaves through human society. Just ask Salmon Rushdie if you don't believe me. And let's not even get onto the power of the written words of Hitler, Karl Marx and Mao Zedong.
As I criminologist, I teach my students that human society is much like the weather in that it is a chaotic system where small and unpredictable random fluctuations in nature and human actions on society (as volcanic eruptions and man-made global warming has demonstrated) can lead to escalating changes in both nature and human society. It is for that reason that economics is not a particularity good system for predicting - beyond 12 months - what any economy will do next. If we accept this as veracious knowledge, how on Earth could Darwinists possibly rationally or logically argue that Matthew's book, having been read by naturalists all around them, many of whom are well known to have influenced them, had no effect whatsoever on the personal subsequent replications of it by Darwin and Wallace? This is just one among many telling questions in this article that they ignore at their intellectual peril. As my discovery that Humpty Dumpty was in fact the son of Punchinello indicates, those who sit on the wall may came in for a great fall.
No special privileges are required for Matthew, no special prejudges against Darwin or Wallace
One of my Darwinist correspondents, Dr Mike Weale of Kings College London, has for some months now engaged in scholarly correspondence with me. At the time of writing, I think it fair to say that we agree on the neglected importance of Patrick Matthew in the story of the discovery of natural selection - and in that endeavor have mutually cooperated in unearthing much of his forgotten work. However, Mike and I (at the time of writing) completely disagree on the question of knowledge contamination from Matthew to Darwin (we have not, if my memory serves me correctly, discussed Wallace - other than to agree to focus on Darwin rather than both replicators).
In our correspondence Mike raised the defense that knowledge contamination seems implausible. His argument is that if it had occurred then surely one of the human contaminators of Matthew's ideas to Darwin (be it in prose, lost correspondence or spoken word) would have blown the whistle on Darwin.
In response, I reply that there are many reasons why this defense is too leaky to hold water. For brevity, I will number the holes that come easily to mind.
1, Not everyone who read Matthew and who then may have spoken or written to Darwin about Matthew's unique ideas would have named Matthew or his book (see Type-1 and Type-2 knowledge contamination)
2, The times were very different than they are today. We cannot judge them by today's standards. Britain was a hierarchical class-dominated society to an extent that is virtually unimaginable today. By 1859, Matthew was a disgraced bankrupt who had lost the family fortune when such a thing was deemed disgraceful. He was a former Chartist leader, libertarian political reformer and agitator and was staunchly anti-religious during a period when religion dominated society at every level. His pre-socialist reform politics were woven into his 1831 hypothesis of natural selection for the betterment of the human race. Darwin was a successful member of the landed gentry and respected world famous gentleman of science. Many of Darwin's friends and associates and his friends friends were staunchly anti Chartist because they feared violent revolution, even the vote for all men, and loss of birthright privileges over the poorer classes. Selby, a friend of Darwin's father and Darwin's great friend Jenyns (among many others) was also a member of the landed gentry.A very religious man (as were most of those involved), Selby wrote he was glad the the Chartists were put down by armed troops in Scotland. Lindley (William Hooker's great friend) drilled a militia of young gardeners to put down the Chartists. Richard Owen, who also drilled an anti-chartist militia of gentleman, stood night-guard with a cudgel to protect museum pieces during fear of Chartist unrest.
3. Darwin was known for his frail health and psychosomatic temperament.Had any accused him of plagiarism the result would have been completely ruinous to his mind and body and reputation. His family would also have shared the disgrace,
4. Darwin was in many of the exclusive scientific clubs and associations of the day. Matthew was in none. Why then promote Matthew's interests if you are not by nature a troublemaker?
5. Many who had read Matthew's book were dead or close to death by 1859. My book provides all the details, but Loudon was long dead, Baden Powel died in 1860 (his letter accusing Darwin of plagiarism is sadly lost). David Low died in 1859. Roget died in 1834. Buel died 20 years earlier. Cree died in 1860, Dovaston died five years earlier, Murray II died 16 years earlier, Norton died seven years earlier, Woodbury died eight years earlier, as did Hill. Rafinesque was dead by 1840. Mure died in 1860. Main died in 1846. Floy was dead by1863. Mudie died in 1842. Wilkin died in 1862. Wison died in 1854.
6. Chambers was not only staunchly anti Chartist, he had several other reasons to despise Matthew; not least because Matthew's book greatly mocked his patron, hero and professional benefactor Sir Walter Scott, but also because it broke all the conventions of the gentlemen of science into whose circles Chambers was desperate to enter. Not least, Darwin knew that Chambers was the secret author of the heretical Vestiges - because Chambers gave him the latest edition as a gift when they met. Darwin then spread the news to his friend Joseph Hooker.
7, Not only did Matthew's book break all the conventions by containing deduced hypothesis as neatly explained by James Secord in his Book Victorian Sensation , it trespassed upon natural theology, mentioned political news from France, promoted Chartist politics, mocked the church and handed God his redundancy notice in its appendix. None that I am aware of who knew about Matthew's books were atheists. In fact most were extremely religious Christians. Any standing up for Matthew's priority would have feared dragging the theory of natural selection and inroads into the professionalism and increasing respectability and prestige of 19th century science greatly backwards. Who would wish to be blamed for such a thing?
8. Many who read the first edition of the Origin, which failed to mention Matthew, would have been aware of Matthew's 1860 claim to his hypothesis and Darwin's 1860 reply that Matthew had priority. Many who read the first edition of the origin in 1859 would be unlikely to next go and read the third edition of 1861, in which Darwin cleverly mocked Matthew as both unread and a catastrophist.
9. Despite the fact that Darwin wrote fallaciously that Matthew's ideas had gone unnoticed, Darwin's Gardeners Chronicle published reply of 1860 may have been believed to represent enough justice for Matthew by any "in the know". Most people are not trouble makers. Many such deliberately non-troublesome people are not particularly bothered enough about injustices perpetrated upon strangers to be the one brave soul who puts their head above the parapet and call others liars. Less so, when those others, as was Darwin, are backed by great wealth and the scientific establishment. Knowing Darwin to be a liar, anyone claiming that Darwin had read or been told about Matthew's book would not expect him to confess the truth. Therefore, they would need hard proof. Or else they would need one or more witnesses prepared to tell the truth and stand steadfast, behind them to bring about Darwin's social and intellectual downfall.
10. In support of point nine, let me ask: Why am I the first to have written to the Royal Society to demand that its own rules on priority are followed so that Matthew is given full priority over Darwin and Wallace? Rules being rules, and justice under the rules being obvious will you, dear reader, take one tiny action (far less than going to print against the mighty Darwin and his Darwinists) and vote - with a mere anonymous click - under that open letter in Matthew's favor? Click - for justice - to take minor action , or not, as the telling case may be.
My book, Nullius, contains a great many more explanations for why the case against Darwin and Wallace needs no special pleading for Matthew. I hope the above 10 points will suffice here to demonstrate that we require no special privileges for Matthew in this case.
Darwin's and Wallace's cats are out of the bag and there is absolutely no getting them, back in.
Correlation does not prove causation. And it is true that on the question of Matthewian knowledge contamination to Darwin and Wallace pre-1858 that the strongest evidence currently in the public domain is a multitude of circumstantial evidence regarding who definitely read Matthew, because they cited him, and who more likely than not read Matthew because they were apparently first to replicate his apparently unique terms, phrases and explanatory examples. This New Data has certainly raised the stink around the corpses of those two cats, Darwin and Wallace, but it is not the stink of more likely than not science fraud that killed them. For we know miasma theory to be debunked. What more likely than not killed those cats is the fact that there is no way now that Darwinists can insist - as they have done prior to my research - that Neither Darwin nor Wallace knew anyone who had read Mathew's prior-published hypothesis.
What the New Data now means now is that a whole new set of DIY Darwinist excuses for failing to recognize Matthew's priority will have to be dreamed up if they wish to try necromance their dead cats in order to continue to be called Darwinists rather than Matthewists.
Darwinists embarking on this face saving effort would be well-advised to pay particular attention to the research on cognitive dissonance and conflict when drafting these brand new Matthew denial notions.
More seriously, the trouble for Darwinists now is that their bleoved cats are dead simply because we do not need to 100% prove science fraud, plagiarism or even innocent knowledge contamination. Just the newly discovered increased probability of any of it is enough. Reality here is like the fictional notion of fairies dying whenever a child simply says they don't believe in them because plausible evidence does not exist. There is no longer any plausible case for denying the possibility of knowledge contamination from Matthew to Darwin and Wallace.
I do argue in my book - with a wealth of other evidence - that it is more likely than not that all three types of knowledge contamination, explained in my typology, probably took place one way or the other. Others can weigh the factual evidence for themselves in order to reach their own conclusions - just as I invite them to do in my book. In fact, as I absolutely insist they do for themselves.
The Matthew Meme
If a Geiger Counter makes its classic noise then scientists know they are detecting radiation. Google is a bit like a Geiger Counter. If I use Google to uniquely detect book after previously undiscovered book and so newly prove that other naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace in fact did read (indeed cite!) Patrick Matthew’s (1831 ) prior published hypothesis of natural selection (Sutton 2014a,2014b ), might we not rationally assume that it is more likely than not that Darwin and Wallace were contaminated by Matthewism? After all, how else exactly are memes spread?
What do we know about how one idea builds like Lego bricks, but invisibly in the human brain, upon the infectious germ of another? Why not ask Richard Dawkins? After all, it was I who uniquely analysed the data in the publication record to find that all the evidence very strongly suggests it was from his mentor, Hamilton, that he got both the prior published name and concept of 'selfish gene', because Hamilton published it in an obscure conference paper years before Dawkins first published it. Yet, despite this fact, an uncountable number of "expert" Darwinist books attribute the original coinage of the term and the basic concept to Dawkins' best-selling book the Selfish Gene.
Clearly, so-called "expert" Darwinists need to get their intellectual houses in order when it comes to what they think they know and then publish information about who was the first to discover what independently of its actual originator.
When it comes to the basic idea of the "selfish gene" - unless we are writing about a parsimonious man named Eugene - is the term not also very much the basic biological concept - at least to a significantly infectious-idea "meme-like" degree? Similarly, as Nulliusreveals, it was not Dawkins, as so many 'expert' scholarly publications claim, who originated the term and concept of the DNA replicator either.
The evidence for Richard Dawkins's own previously undetected brain infection from the germs of other people's ideas is in my book. It is in a chapter entitled "Richard Dawkins and the Selfish Replicator. That chapter builds on the blog article I wrote in 2013 on the same topic. That article has today (26 Feb 2015) been accessed by 5562 separate readers.
Do Darwinists want it, yet again, with 'special prejudice', to be another way for Matthew but not for a Darwinist called Dawkins? Is it to be the case that Dawkins can innocently catch a meme, but not Darwin or Wallace? How can that, rationally, be so?
Much of this protracted reasoning - and additional evidence of poor Dawinist scholarship in the field of the history of discovery - should ideally be beside the point, because following their replication of a prior published hypothesis, without citation, and replication of its author's apparently unique terms and explanatory examples having been the work of Darwin and Wallace, the burden of proof is not now upon me.
The burden of proof in such cases is now upon Darwinists to prove that the replicators, Darwin and Wallace, did independently discover the Originator's - Matthew's - prior published hypothesis. How on Earth can they possibly do that now in light of the New Data?
Consequently, I expect one new wriggle-move will be made by any surviving Darwinists, suffering from New Data "veracity shock". I predict that they will backtrack and claim they are no longer sure Matthew did get the full and complete and appreciable hypothesis of natural selection. If they go down that route then they had better start book-burning because many writing on the history of the discovery of natural selection and Patrick Matthew , including Charles Darwin (1860)[1] , (1861)[2] Alfred Russel Wallace (1879)[3] , Donald Forsdyke (2008)[4] , Milton Wainwright (2008)[5] , Christopher Hallpike (2008)[6] , Richard Dawkins (2010)[7] William James Dempster (1983)[8] and I (Sutton 2014)[9] , discuss and conclude that Patrick Matthew (1831) - in his book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture[10] - published the full theory of natural selection many years before Darwin and Wallace put pen to private notepaper on the topic and 27 years before Darwin and Wallace (1858) had their papers read before the Linnean Society. And if they seek to argue that those authors listed above understood Matthew's ideas but those who cited Matthew pre-1858 never did then that seems rather ludicrous. Does it not?
Darwin and Wallace both understood what Matthew had originated as soon as he confronted them with it (although, of course they may well have read it many years earlier). Matthew's ideas and their powerful originality are clear as bell to me as well, and I'm not even a naturalist. I'm a social scientist.
I have three more questions that Darwin's defenders will have to answer on the point of how easy it was for others to realize exactly how important and uniquely heretical Matthew's discovery was: (1) Was Mathew lying then when he told Darwin in the Gardener's chronicle of the naturalist who so understood his ideas that he dare not teach them for fear of the cutty stool? And (2): Did Loudon not write in 1832 that Matthew appeared to have something possibly unique to say on "the origin of species" no less? And (3): If the population had been reading the various editions of The Vestiges of Creation since the early 1840s, would they not be readily attuned to novelty of Matthew's distinct ideas on evolution?
Whatever the case, the fact of the matter - and it's no mere opinion - is that I have uniquely discovered a great deal of new and disconfirming hard facts for the mere prior Darwinist knowledge belief that Matthew's book went unread by any naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace - and the lesser knowledge belief that it went unread by any naturalists at all. Those mere prior knowledge beliefs are factually blown to smithereens by my original research.
What exactly have I personally discovered that is new and has not been dismissed already by other scholars?
When news of my new book was covered by Sarha Knapton, the Science Editor of the Telegraph in 2014 ,Darwinist professor James Moore confidently informed the public that as far as he knew, I have discovered nothing new. However, the irrefutable hard fact of the matter is that such Semmelweis puppet reflex-jerks cannot wish-turn hard new facts back into comfortable old fallacies. Before my book "Nullius in Verba" dropped its bombshell no one had discovered anyone that Darwin and Wallace knew who had read Matthew’s book before 1860. I discovered many. If that's not something new then nothing is.
Before my original research on this topic, a few scholars brave/wise enough to say so knew that Loudon was a naturalist who read Matthew's book in 1831 and reviewed it in 1832. But even in Loudon's case it was I who uniquely discovered that Loudon was editor of the journal that published Blyth's two influential articles on species and variety - articles that the renowned anthropologist Loren Eiseley, and others since, believed Darwin plagiarized in 1858. The important point now being, Darwin always admitted the great influence Blyth had on his work.
From my new, original and unique research, we now newly know that a minimum of 25 people cited Matthew's book - seven of whom were naturalists - and three of the "citing seven" naturalists (six of them uniquely discovered by me) played key roles editing and facilitating the work of Darwin/Wallace - or else influenced the known work they admitted had influenced them. Those three naturalists are Loudon, Chambers and Selby. Other than Loudon - I uniquely discovered Selby and Chambers.
As more books are scanned by Google - more naturalists who cited Matthew pre-1858 will most likely introduce themselves to us from out of the long forgotten dusty volumes in our libraries. Who might those as yet unknown ghosts be? These are exciting times for genuinely open minded scholars. But they are frightening times for self-serving mythmongers.
Those mythmongers might seek to cling to the old trick of demanding 'special prejudices' against Matthew by insisting - like some fairyland king demanding Matthew should have found the Golden Fleece - that he should have trumpeted his discovery from the rooftops (see my criticism of Dawkins's Trumpet here) during times when to do so was likely to lead to prosecution and ostracism for sedition and heresy, or that - alternatively - he should have re-published and promoted his hypothesis more than he did - despite very convincing arguments that Darwin held-off his own publication of the same hypothesis for 20 years until he had safely collected a great wealth of confirmatory evidence to support it, because to have done otherwise would have been a personal disaster.
When Matthew famously anticipated both Darwin and Wallace in 1831 - he did so at a time of violent rioting and unrest. The reform riots happened that year and were soon followed by the Chartist uprising that took Britain to the very brink of class-war revolution. The fact that Matthew - a Scottish Chartism leader - had woven his radical politics into his biological hypothesis of evolution in his book of 1831 is one good reason he could not have promoted his hypothesis had he wanted to. But why, anyway, do Darwinists insist he should have promoted it, when they don't insist on the same for Fleming and Mendel?
When Matthew anticipated Darwin and Wallace, he he did not anticipate their famous replication of his prior-published unique bombshell ideas without citation. On the contrary.
All the evidence reveals that Matthew did not want to bother to do all the hard work to prove his own hypothesis. He had done enough to publish a deduced and heretical hypothesis in 1831 when such things were seriously frowned upon.
When Matthew published his hypothesis he invited naturalists to conduct experiments to test his unique notion of natural selection by random divergent ramification against Lamarck's ideas. In Note F of his appendix he wrote:
"This circumstance-adaptive law, operating upon the slight but continued natural disposition to sport in the progeny (seedling variety), does not preclude the supposed influence which volition or sensation may have over the configuration of the body. To examine into the disposition to sport in the progeny, even when there is only one parent, as in many vegetables, and to investigate how much variation is modified by the mind or nervous sensation of the parents, or of the living thing itself during its progress to maturity; how far it depends upon external circumstance and how far on the will irritability and muscular exertion is open to examination and experiment. In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments."
Darwin found a great deal of evidences to support Matthew's hypothesis, and he certainly did a far better job of promoting it. However, no amount of confirmatory evidence gathering or idea promotion can ever transmutate one person’s original prior published idea, hypothesis or discovery into your own. That is why Fleming, Mendel and Higgs are all celebrated in science as immortal great thinkers and discoverers over those who found the evidences to support their hypotheses, great discoveries and ideas. And that is why Matthew should receive exactly the same recognition over any later work conducted by Darwin and Wallace on his original hypothesis. The failure of the scientific community to award Matthew full priority is a shameful omission that stains the history of science. The excuses they have cooked up in the past, and the new ones they create to seek to rebuff the significance of the New Data, are shameless acts of in-group guilt neutralization for Darwin's and Wallace's most probable plagiarism.
Following the self-serving rhetoric of Alfred Wallace, who wrote in his autobiography that Matthew failed to see the importance of his full prior-discovery of natural selection because he never personally developed it further, Richard Dawkins (2010) replicated the same "poor sucker never knew what he had" nonsense with his "wouldn't he have trumpeted it from the rooftops if he understood its importance" rhetorical question.
Outside of the intellectual care home for such daft Darwinist nonsense, the reason Matthew never took his idea any further forward and never trumpeted his discovery from any rooftops are quite obviously twofold.
Worldwide copyright laws applyUsed only with express written permission
Patrick Matthew: Solver of the problem of emergence of new and extinction of species, God-slaying biological father of the theory of natural selection
Firstly, as Matthew (1860) informed Darwin in the pages of the Gardener's Chronicle', the first half of the 19th century was a time where his unique ideas on the origin of species were deemed heretical and not to be taught or cited. This is the exact same reason why other writers (e.g. Desmond, A. Moore, J. and Browne, J. (2007) Charles Darwin. Oxford. Oxford University Press.) think Darwin held off publishing his own work on natural selection for over 20 years.
Secondly, Matthew posed his bombshell ideas as a hypothesis and simply invited other naturalists to test them by experiment and observation (pretty much like Alexander Fleming and Peter Higgs). In the 19th century, as I explain in my book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret ' (see also: Secord. J. A. (2000) Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago and London. The University of Chicago Press.) there was great prejudice against simply posing a deducted hypothesis and it was against the code of 19th century gentlemen of science to do so or to cite such work.
John van Wyhe (2007) has written a paper, which offers this as a very plausible reason why Darwin delayed publishing for so long. The most telling question here is to ask: 'Why then should Darwinists insist that Matthew should have done that which they are perfectly happy to make rational excuses for their namesake not doing?' I think the answer is obvious. Darwinists are terribly biased-blinded in favour of their namesake whenever it comes to the question of Matthew's right to his own theory; the one Darwin replicated and called his own.
The work of leading Darwinists, being so seriously flawed by their adoration of Darwin, that they demand of the originator (Matthew) actions that - according to them - Darwin did well not to take. Such seriously biased scholarship shades rather than illuminates the real process of the discovery of natural selection.
Shameless Treatment by Darwin and his Darwinists
In 1860, as soon as Matthew became aware of Darwin's replication of his hypothesis without citation, he wrote to the Dublin University Review claiming priority. For his pains he was severely mocked as a crank in its pages. Undeterred, Matthew laid his claim to it in the Gardeners Chronicle. And the rest is history.
Darwin told six lies in order to achieve his priority over Matthew and Wallace. These lies are explored in Nullius. One of them was to ignore the fact that Matthew informed him in the Gardener's Chronicle (1860) that at least two naturalists he knew of had read his book and understood it. Yet the very next year, in the third edition of the Origin of Species, and in every edition thereafter, Darwin lied when he wrote that Matthew's ideas had gone unread.
Historians and biologists have written many times to imply that Matthew's book was unread by naturalists because, so they believe, it was not the sort of book a 19th century naturalist would read. This thinking is erroneous because all the evidence of what they did read, in their own citations, proves that naturalists were drawn to such books. Darwin's own private note books reveal as much. This general misconception was perhaps started by Darwin himself when he wrote to defend himself against Matthew's claim to full priority. Darwin (1860) wrote in the Gardeners Chronicle:
"I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views, considering how briefly they are given, and that they appeared in the appendix to a work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture."
It is no doubt this line that has influenced the notion that Matthew's book went unread among naturalists because it had an "inappropriate title". This is, of course, utter stuff and nonsense, because it would only be fair to think that way if most other books naturalists read had titles that glared out the subject matter of evolution, species variation and other natural selection relevant subject matter! Books on apple trees, silviculture and naval timber were in fact just the sort of thing naturalists would read. The first two books of the Royal Society were on those exact topics. Naval timber and the growing of it was of primary interest to economic botanists such as Darwin's friends William and Joseph Hooker, because so much of it was desperately needed in the first half of the 19th century (Sutton 2014 ). Darwinists, who need to learn their history do an excellent job of confirming mydysology hypothesis :
Letting scholars get away with publishing fallacies and myths signals to others the existence of topics where guardians of good scholarship might be less capable than elsewhere. Such dysology then serves as an allurement to poor scholars to disseminate existing myths and fallacies and to create and publish their own in these topic areas, which leads to a downward spiral of diminishing veracity on particular topics.
Moreover, Darwin was lying about Matthew's ideas being solely in an appendix, because he had just written to his best friend Joseph Hooker admitting that Matthew's text on natural selection came from three main parts of his entire book.
Picking up on Darwin's cue:
Loren Eiseley (1957) in Darwin's Century (p. 127) writes: "Matthew's system perished, ...because it had been published obscurely by an obscure man..."Bowler (2013) in Darwin Deleted (p. 58) implies Matthew was unread: "Having a basic idea, even publishing it, has no effect if the publication is obscure..."Millhauser (1959) in Just before Darwin (p. 72) implies the same by dismissing it as some kind of working man's manual: "And there is that remarkable fellow Patrick Matthew, whose Naval Timber and Arboriculture (of all the practical books in the world)...."Dawkins (2010) In Seeing Further (p, 209) does the same: "...wouldn't he have published it in a more prominent place than the appendix to a manual on silviculture?"
Countless other less creative credulous Darwinists, such as the greatly revered Stephen J Gould , the founder of the so-called "Skeptics Society" Michael Shermer , and the dysological Rebecca Stott simply reprinted Darwin's fallacy verbatim as though it were true in some religious sense simply because "it is written."
A blatant example of the mythmongering that Matthew's book went completely unread is provided by Sir Gavin de Beer (FRS) wrote in the Wilkins Lecture for the Royal Society (de Beer 1962 on page 333 ):
"...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.'
What the expert Royal Society member Sir Gavin Rylands de Beer, British evolutionary embryologist, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), President of the Linnean Society, and receiver of the Royal Society's Darwin Medal for his studies on evolution never knew - that I have uniquely discovered (see Nullius in Verba ) - is that at least 25 people actually cited Matthew's book before Darwin's and Wallace's papers were read before the Linnean Society in 1858, seven of them were naturalists, four known to Darwin and two to Wallace. Perhaps the Royal Society needs to improve the quality of its membership and medal winners? Linnean society too. The pseudo-scholarly glee-club shame of it!
Similarly, but more specifically, referring to 'biologists' - who are essentially included in what we used to call naturalists in the 19th century - the leading evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (1982, p. 499) wrote:of Matthew's unique ideas in his 1831 book:
'... 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.'
You can read more on the errors of Mayr, of de beer and even my own Darwinist hero -Dempster on this topic in a dedicated blog post (Sutton 2015) ..
We must not forget, of course, that all these errors stem from Darwin's lies about the readership of Matthew's book in the Gardener's Chronicle, his private correspondence and from the third edition of the origin of Species onward.
Other questions regarding Darwin's loose writing, self-serving falsehoods and downright lies, which are all dealt with in my book and to a minor degree in my article , are not particularly relevant to the point of this particular debate, because here we are talking about the informal rationale used by Darwinists to seeking to deny Matthew his due full priority over Darwin and Wallace for his prior-publication of the discovery they replicated. That Darwinist rationale started from a fallacious premise that no naturalist, more so no naturalist known to Darwin or Wallace, read Matthew's book before 1860. Darwin started the fallacy by writing it - literally - and it has been parroted and used more subtly ever since so that what Darwin wrote in the Gardeners Chronicle in 1860 has been allowed to stand unchallenged by Darwinists and historians of science - as though it were in some way fundamentally true. But the New Data 100 per cent proves it untrue.
Dreadful Darwinist Shenanigans
Matthew's British Association of Advancement of Science paper was platform blocked at the the annual conference in Dundee . Matthew wrote to the press of the scandal that others were allowed to speak on the topic of his original discovery but that they left his paper until last and then said it was to late for him to read it. Because it was not read, under the rules it could not be published in the conference proceedings. Those proceedings were published by Darwin's publisher of the Origin of Species, no less.
Hard New and Independently verifiable Facts Summarized
Contrary to the myth, started by Darwin that no one read Matthew's book, newly conducted BigData analysis reveals that 25 people cited it. Seven of those 25 were naturalists. Four of those naturalists were known to Darwin/Wallace. Three of those naturalists known to Darwin/Wallace played major roles at the epicenter of influence and facilitation on the pre-1858 work of Darwin and Wallace. A plagiarism analysis reveals Darwin and Wallace used the same phrases as Matthew, replicated his unique ideas and even copied his highly idiosyncratic explanatory examples. Darwin even uniquely four word shuffled Matthew's unique name for his discovery!
Reflections, Conclusions and the Way Forward
The right to full priority over Darwin and Wallace for his own prior-published discovery is Matthew's anyway under the Royal Society of London's rules enshrined by the Arago Effect. To argue otherwise would involve claiming now that Fleming and Mendel should not have priority for their own obscurely published work, which they effectively relied upon others to find and prove by their experiments. Do Darwinists cry also that Higgs should be be stripped of the Nobel Prize because others found the confirmatory evidence for his hypothesis of "The God Particle "? Of course not. So surely they cannot rationally claim something else, other than full priority for Matthew over Darwin and Wallace. But because they do deny Matthew his full priority, then, in my opinion, that makes those Darwinists - all of them - irrational and unjust.
Without the New Data, the granting of "special privileges" for Darwin and Wallace, as deified miraculous immaculate conception replicators, might have been dragged on for another century - who knows? But such dysology is at last at an end now. Because we now know of the evidence for "knowledge contamination" from those who read Matthew who then went and influenced the work of Darwin and Wallace.
Moreover, the more people who read the one book in the world that Darwin and Wallace needed to read, since they replicated so much that was in it, must surely exponentially increase the probability of type-3 knowledge contamination. i.e. full blown science fraud. Given the New Data we are left with one binary question. Namely, what were Darwin and Wallace then? Were they shnooks or crooks?
Whatever Darwin and Wallace were, the new likelihood that any type of knowledge contamination occurred - in any way - is in fact all that is all that is actually needed for the myth of the dual immaculate conception to be laughed right back out the window through which it crawled into a presentation of two unoriginal papers at the Linnean Society in 1858. There was no wondrous dual immaculate conception miracle revealed that day, only the presentation of Matthew's unique ideas without due citation.
We do not need to deploy Occam's Razor to help us out here, although it can. All we need do is remember the old caution when wondering whether or not someone is trying to defraud us: If it appears to good to be true, then it probably is.
Far more evidences than I have presented here are in my book "Nullius". As said, to repeat the point already made, respectable Darwinists, being scientists, not pseudo-scholars, must weigh all of those evidences - as opposed to simply to cherry picking the odd one or two that suits them. To summarize, so far, the points in this article, and some more from my book that I don't give away for free here, I think it has been shown in "Nullius" that certain facts are irrefutable:
1, Patrick Matthew existed.
2, He wrote a book that contained the first full hypothesis of natural selection, 27 years before Darwin and Wallace claimed to have discovered the same thing independently of it.
3. Naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace read Matthew's book and four of them actually cited it. In all, seven naturalists, among a total of over 20 individuals, actually cited Matthew's book in the published literature pre-1858.
4. Matthew's book was widely advertised on the subject of species. It was even advertised in the Encyclopedia Britannica, where it was also cited in an article. The advert and article can be read on the excellent Patrick Matthew Project website, which is the brainchild and labour of Dr Mike Weale. Several prominent reviews were written on Matthew's book, two of which mentioned Matthew's important work on species - no less!.
5. Darwin's pre 1858 notebook of books read shows he held in his hands at least five publications that either advertised or else cited Matthew's book.
6. Matthew was far from being an obscure writer. As the Patrick Matthew Project archive reveals, he was a well known and prolific and prominent writer, agriculturalist and political agitator in the first half of the 19th century. As the publication record of citations shows, he had an international reputation as an arboriculutrslist and award winning hybridizer.
7. Far from being an inappropriate and obscure place to publish the first great hypothesis of natural selection, the subject of both naval timber and arboriculture was at the very forethought of interest of the gentlemen of science of the day and their governments throughout the world. By way of example, the two very first, and among the most important, publications of the Royal Society were on the very same subject of naval timber and apple growing. And their titles bore that out .
8. The very first thing Darwin wrote on natural selection was in his 1837 Zoonomia notebook and it was on Matthew's expert area. Fruit trees! The one line in that notebook that Darwin's son Francis thought revealed his father's possible Eureka moment was on Matthew's expert area of apple hybridization of the Golden Pippin Apple. Only Darwin, being no expert could not even 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.’
9. Darwin and Wallace not only replicated Matthews discovery of natural selection and claimed it as their own, they also replicated his terms, phrases and unique explanatory examples to explain it.
10. In sum, the theory of natural selection that Darwin and Wallace constructed was made in large, and in its foundations, keystone and cornerstone parts, from the bricks made in the kiln of Matthew's great mind. Those special and uniquely shaped bricks were sold on a small island occupied by Darwin and Wallace so that they might use them to construct their own houses, based on a central model of Matthew's unique design, which necessarily would incorporate many of his uniquely invented components.
The problem is that Matthew anticipated Darwin and Wallace, but he did not anticipate their plagiarsm. He expected to be cited for his marvellous work. However, Darwin and Wallace, both being ambitious to make a great and noted original contribution to science were naught but unoriginal replicators operating under the judgement of the Arago Effect.
Merton (1957) explained how this Royal Society rule of priority encourages science fraud by plagiarism.
Explanations by Analogy
The Geiger Counter Analogy
The fact that Matthewian “knowledge contamination” being newly discovered to have been present in the literature pre-1858 no more proves that it infected those who cited Matthew pre-1858 than a Geiger Counter proves that those who came close enough to the detected source of radiation were significantly irradiated and then significantly affected, However, what we do know about radioactivity and physiological responses to it, and what we know about “memes ” and the great power of written words to psychologically - both consciously and subconsciously - influence those who read them, and infect wider thinking in society, is enough for us to know under what conditions being physically contaminated by radiation and psychologically contaminated by the ideas you read is more likely than not.
Because Matthew got there first - if one single iota of his original and prior-published work on natural selection somehow got into the brains of Darwin or Wallace (directly or indirectly - consciously or subconsciously, orally or in writing) before 1858 then thereafter we have zero idea of what effect it had on their later work, because we have little idea of exactly how human brains build from one unique idea to a greater formulation of ideas based on them. All that matters, therefore, is the likelihood that some kind of knowledge contamination took place to completely destroy any notion of immaculate conception (independent discovery) of Matthew's prior published theory.
I argue that such knowledge contamination (1) can no longer be denied by Darwin's"...neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew's views" (2) is more likely than not (3) it would be a miracle (given the New Data) if it never occurred. (4) Most Darwinists claim to be against the notion of miracles (5) All Darwinists appear to think Wallace and Darwin did miraculously conceive natural selection - independently of Matthew's prior publication of it and independently of those naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace who read it - and independently of each other. (6) I don't believe in miracles - not of any kind. No exceptions No special Darwinist privileges!.(7) If there was no knowledge contamination then we need to call in the Vatican - because Darwin and Wallace are miracle performing unique ideas, terms and idiosyncratic examples replicating saints with miraculous, though selectively impervious to only The Originator's work which they amazingly uniquely replicated despite socializing and corresponding with others who cited Matthew's book!
In sum, Matthew has priority anyway and now even the desperately daft DIY Darwinist demands and denial excuses are all busted by rational arguments and independently verifiable hard evidence. The Darwinist cats are out the bag and there is no getting them back in. Darwin needed to write that no naturalist read Matthew line in 1860, and it served him well for 154 years. But it perished in 2014.
More so, in the case of Matthewian knowledge contamination when we see the roles played at the very epicenter of influence on and facilitation of the pre-1858 written work of Darwin and Wallace by those who read and cited Matthew's (1831) book pre-1858 - namely: Loudon, Selby and Chambers (Sutton 2104 ). Does it not, rationally, seem more likely than not the case, therefore, that Matthew did psychologically influence these three naturalists and so influenced - in some way - through "knowledge contamination" the work of Darwin and Wallace (Sutton 2015 )?
If you doubt the relevance of comparing the power of radioactivity with the power of the written word then perhaps you should argue against the latest insights into terrorist radicalization, via written ideas, on the Internet. Perhaps you might also criticize the wisdom of Western military leaders investing in "words warfare ". Even more on-topic, consider the overwhelming evidence that Matthew (1839) coined the term, originated the concept and influenced President Kennedy in the 1960's to launch the US Peace Corps (Sutton 2013). How long before expert knowledge in this area creates a munitions-level meme Twitter account do you think?
The Metal Detector Analogy
Imagine a Greek olive grower uses a metal detector in his grove and discovers a hoard of ancient Greek coins. Experts date them as being from at least 700 BC.
Current knowledge, in real life, has it that the ancient Greeks, Turks and Indians all independently invented money by coining the first coins around 500 - 400 BC as a solution to the problem of trading what you have for what you want between inconveniently distant populations. Greek coins dating to 700 BC would give the Greeks priority.
What if, in this imaginary analogy, some of the Greek coins detected by our olive grower contained symbols, styles, unique phrases and other highly idiosyncratic and unique ideas that were replicated by the ancient Indians in their very first coins, and others contained the same that were likewise replicated by the ancient Turks?
Under such a scenario, would not possible direct knowledge contamination between the Greeks and Turks be without question. Furthermore, given the known trade routes between India and Greece in those times, the same would apply for indirect knowledge contamination. Under such a fictional scenario, any archaeologist insisting that all that has been discovered with that metal detector is inconsequential circumstantial evidence would be making an irrational claim, in my opinion.
What if such an archaeologist, in such a scenario, was to go on to support his argument by writing that nothing of consequence has been discovered because there is no - "smoking gun" - clay tablet, inscribed by ancient Indians and/or Turks, admitting the Greek influence? I believe such an argument would be laughed at and its maker assessed as suffering from cognitive dissonance. Because knowledge contamination from the Greeks would, rationally, appear more likely than not following the new discovery of the prior-coined Greek coins. in light of what we know about the social and biological conditions of the time.
In real life, at least at the time of writing, Darwinists are insisting on the need for a "smoking gun" letter from Darwin or Wallace admitting that they were influenced by Matthew. Without such a letter these Darwinist experts see no evidence of knowledge contamination having happened. In my opinion, that makes truth stranger than fiction, because we now know that naturalists known to both Wallace and Darwin had read and cited Matthew's book containing the very unique ideas, terms and the unique explanatory analogy they both replicated. Therefore, in light of what we know about the social and biological conditions of the time, Scottish knowledge contamination seems more likely than not.
The following four points in the Metal Detector Analogy apply equally for Wallace as they do for Darwin.
1. Google Chrome is like a metal detector because both enable non-experts in a field to make important and unique discoveries that overturn prior-knowledge beliefs held by experts. For two examples among many, Google enabled me to bust the pervasive Darwinist myth (See Nullius) that Darwin coined the term and biological meaning of natural selection, and it enabled me to uniquely bust the 155 year old Darwinist myth that no one known to Darwin and Wallace had read Matthew's book before 1860.
2. Darwinists believe that Matthew, Wallace and Darwin each independently conceived the theory of natural selection, despite the fact Matthew did so first and published it in a book that was cited by those who are acknowledged to have influenced the replicators Darwin and Wallace. In this respect, the truth of what is weirdly believed is once again stranger than fiction. Matthew's 1831 book contained unique terms - such as 'natural process of selection' that Darwin subsequently uniquely four-word-shuffled into 'process of natural selection'. Darwin - and many naturalists that he and his friends knew well - replicated other unique Matthewisms such as 'long continued selection' David Low, Darwin and Wallace even replicated Matthew's unique analogy of artificial selection to explain wild selection in nature. Darwin knew Low, recommended him to the Royal Society. Low, then Darwin (1844) replicated Matthew's analogy of trees raised in nurseries versus those in nature. Trees were the very first thing Darwin wrote about in his 1837 Zoonomia notebook. And it was what Darwin wrote on hybridized pippin apples - Matthew's area of greatest expertise - that gave the first indication he was thinking about natural selection. And we know Darwin read Matthew's ideas on apple hybridization because his notebook shows he read a journal containing them.
3. The New Data as to who cited Matthew that Darwin and Wallace and their friends knew, reveals they were around for many years with many opportunities for direct and indirect Matthewian knowledge contamination between 1831 and 1858.
4. Despite the possibility and - arguably more likely than not probability - that Darwin and Wallace were subjected to Matthewian knowledge contamination, Darwinists insist that all such evidence is meaningless without the discovery of a written 'smoking gun' admission from Darwin or Wallace. This new insistence in light of the new evidence that contrary to the old Darwinists myth, Darwin and Wallace actually did know naturalists who read Matthew's prior-published hypothesis, is highly indicative of Darwinist cognitive dissonance. If that is not the case, then why is is not enough for Darwinists to accept the truth now that their necessary belief of 'independent' discovery of a prior published theory - through isolation from those who read it - has been completely disproved? Their desperate stubbornness to accept the truth revealed by light of the New Data is laughable. Should we re-name them Darwinits?
Patrick Matthew's Artificial Selection Analogy
Biologists have a peculiarly limited understanding of concept of analogy. Unlike the wider population - including those in other science disciplines - they see an explanatory analogy as something which must compare the similarities only of different things to show how one is like another. But an analogy - according to the Oxford English Dictionary and any common-sense understanding of the concept - can also compare one thing with another in order to show how they are dissimilar.
The peculiar analogy blindness of Darwinists - the majority of whom are biologists - is the reason why they failed to spot that Matthew not only originated the hypothesis of natural selection - arguably the world's most important scientific hypothesis of all time - but also the world's most important analogy to explain it. David Lowe, Robert Mudie, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace all replicated Matthew's original analogy of Artificial versus Natural Selection. See my blog post (Sutton 2015: Why Darwinists Missed the World's Most Powerful Analogy ) to learn all the details. See also my April 19th 2015 blg post on how I arrived at Robert Mudie using the ID method alone - which further confirms my "first to be second" hypothesis and my concpet of 'knowledge contamination', because as Loren Eisely (1979) showed, Mudie certanly influenced Darwin's great influencer Blyth, which now newly reveals the almost certain knowledge contamnation from Matthew to Mudie to Blyth to Darwin.
Matthew's 1831 unique and perfect analogy of how artificial selection creates more, yet vulnerable if in the wild, varieties than those selected by nature to be most circumstance suited to survival, was a bombshell of an explanation that changed the world. And it did so because it got into the minds of both Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1844, 1859). The only problem is, they never acknowledged Matthew as the source.
I think that there is another perfect analogy in this story. That analogy explains why the New Data about who really did read Matthew's book pre-1858 is such a bombshell in the history of science. Let me explain.
The Miraculous Blessed Virgins Darwin and Wallace Analogy
Belief in miracles depends upon faith that they happened. Faith of any kind – religious or science - constitutes total abandonment of the normal rules of evidence by refusal to rationally weigh the disconfirming evidence. The miracle of St Mary's miraculous conception of the baby Jesus would not depend upon utter faith in the scriptures were it not for the absolute fact that she was mingling with fertile men. And we know they were fertile because they had fathered children. Exactly the same can be said for Darwin and Wallace, who both mingled with men whose brains were fertile with Matthew's ideas. And we know they were fertile, because they read and then fathered their own books that cited Matthew's book, which contained those unique ideas.
Defenders of the faith in Darwin and Wallace might insist that there is no smoking gun, in the form of a pre-1858 admission to or from Darwin or Wallace about Matthew's discovery, to be found in the decimated correspondence archive of lost burnt and stolen correspondence. But neither is there one to be found in the Bible or elsewhere regarding the human paternity of Jesus of Nazareth. Does the absence of such a letter, confirming that the Abrahamic God was a duped dad, make it any less likely in the minds of Darwinists that he was? Surely not. What then are we to make of this Darwinist 'special pleading' requirement for such a paternity document in the case of Matthew's prior-published conception?
As an explanation for why knowledge contamination is more likely than not, I think the Virgin Mary Analogy teases out anticipated differences of opinion perfectly.
Some might worry that my deployment of the Virgin Mary Analogy represents an ad hominem attack-argument against Darwinists, or else the same against any who disagree with my conclusions that Matthew more likely than not influenced both Darwin and Wallace. In advance reply to such an anticipated criticism, I would like to quote what David Deutsch (2012: p.371) writes in his fine book: 'The Beginning of Infinity: explanations that transform the world':
'Arguments by analogy are fallacies. Almost any analogy between any two things contains some grain of truth, but one cannot tell what that is until one has an independent explanation for what is analogous to what and why.'
Deutsch is right, all analogies are fallacies. And while the most important quality of a good analogy is its simplicity, which is necessary in order for it to work a sort of heuristic device , it seems that the best analogies of all are those that fulfil the second most important criteria. Namely, to be as close as possible to the comparable truth. Matthew's bombshell artificial selection analogy is true in that way. Because what is the fallacy is that selection by man is not the same as selection by nature. But what makes the analogy so powerfully true it that that is the precise point! I am grateful to my colleague Andy Sutton (no relative) for discussing this with me and so helping me to arrive at this understanding.
Perhaps it is the qualities of simplicity and such comparable near-truth that make Matthew's artificial selection analogy so great. Is it Matthew's unique analogy - first replicated by David Low, then by Darwin and then Wallace - that is one of the most important reasons why his prior-published hypothesis had such a great impact? Not without the rest of it, obviously, otherwise David Low would have been cited by Darwin as the Originator! I'm not sure about Wallace, after all he claimed it all came to him in a, unique in the history of discovery, fit of malaria.
My independent explanation for why Darwin's immaculate conception is analogous to the Virgin Mary's is intrinsically a fallacy. But it is a perfect analogy, in my opinion, because both Mary and Darwin (Darwin it is newly discovered) were surrounded by men who had the, more likely than not under their respective biological and social conditions, capacity to be the cause of their respective physical and mental conceptions.
I think those men around Darwin who we now newly know read Matthew, because they cited him, had, therefore at least a germ, or more fittingly, the metaphorical sperm, of Matthew’s ideas in their brains. To my thinking, an idea in the brain of another is analogous to sperm in a testicle of another, if you will. And to prove the point, I just fertilized your brain with it. Sorry about that! But that's exactly how it happens. You just conceived my idea, and I fathered it.
In their testicles, some men have more sperm then others. Some men have more vigorous sperm than others. In the company of a fertile woman, all but infertile men have some biological chance of impregnating her. Her chances of conceiving, over the years, whilst surrounded by these men, are enhanced to a small degree at least by her willingness to be so. Exactly the same is true of being told, hearing, reading and remembering new ideas. But just like someone who does not want to hear the results of a football match before watching the replay, or reading the admittedly weird paragraph above this one, emotional receptivity to information and sperm is not essential for conception to happen.
I have no idea what the levels of fertility were in the men around the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have no idea what the level of comprehension of “unique Matthewness” was in the minds of those around Darwin and Wallace and their influencer friends and associates. But I think it more likely than not, they being curious naturalists at a time when "evolution was in the air", because Robert Chambers put it there, that reading Matthew's unique ideas - which Chambers had read - on that hot topic had some influence on their brains. And because of that likelihood, and because they were associating and corresponding with Darwin and Darwin’s friends (same for Wallace) they more likely than not had some indeterminate level of "knowledge contamination" influence on the fact that Darwin and Wallace replicated so much that was unique in Matthew’s prior published book. Consequently, it seems to me that it is more likely than not that the notion of independent discovery is now lost, at least rationally and scientifically, to Darwinists.
Accepting David Deutsch's(2011) logic that that many (of course not all) analogies are actually fallacies (e.g. ideas in books are not Lego bricks, nor are they sperms in testicles), The Virgin Mary Analogy can at least be independently explained regarding what is analogous to what and why. And its a far better analogy, in my opinion, for knowledge contamination than my earlier metal detector analogy or Darwin's own famously dismal attempt to use an analogy about architects and stones to explain explain natural selection .
In this precise regard, I think disseminable sperm in testicles, and similarly disseminable complex and unique fertile ideas in brains, provides a better analogy than simple building block or masonry, which is one analogy that others have deployed to argue in defence of how Darwin might feasibly have replicated in print - like one might construct a house or bridge - the original published complex ideas, terms and explanatory examples of Matthew without prior knowledge of how the Originator used them. In particular, the Virgin Mary Analogy neatly disarms the Darwinists of their 'special pleading' instance that in the case of Matthew, but not Mary, they require a "smoking gun" letter of paternity admission.
Some Darwinists may now wish to argue that either no knowledge contamination took place at all or that if it did, that it was inconsequential. I think that argument requires an unacceptable, in science, leap of faith. Moreover, I would answer to that presupposed “inconsequential” argument with five telling questions: (1) “What about memes? (2) What about chaos theory? (3) What do we actually know at all about how one big idea builds upon the seed of a smaller one conceived by another and communicated to the human brain? (4) How many veracious examples of claimed immaculate conception of a prior published theory - conceived by those surrounded by others known to have read the original - exist in the history of scientific discovery? (5) If others, well known and influential to Darwin and Wallace could find and read the one book in the world that they needed to read - since they replicated so much that was uniquely in it - choose which one you think best describes Darwin and Wallace: (a) crooks (b) schnooks?
To me, the fact of the matter is that the New Data, about who really did read Matthew’s prior published hypothesis, has tested and found wanting the old “independent discovery” hypothesis. Defects in the old story of Darwin’s and Wallace’s independent discovery have now been exposed by a newly discovered reality.
The following four points in the Blessed Virgin Darwin Analogy apply equally for Wallace as they do for Darwin.
1. The Blessed Virgin Mary (AKA Saint Mary of Nazareth) was more likely than not surrounded by fertile men. Darwin was surrounded by those who we now newly know (Sutton 2014) read Patrick Matthew's prior published hypothesis of natural selection, and so they were more likely than not fertile with Matthew's unique ideas.2. Darwinists who claim Darwin (1858; 1859) independently discovered Matthew's (1831) prior published theory, and all atheists, demand no written paternity admission from any man alive at the time of Christ to refute the Christian belief in the Virgin Mary's immaculate conception, because it's a massively improbable and un-evidenced claim that she immaculately conceived the baby Jesus under the biological and social conditions in which she lived. Human sexual intercourse seems like the most likely cause of conception. If Christ was not fathered by a man then a supernatural miracle happened. Christians believe in miracles.3. Why then do Darwinists, who believe in Darwin's immaculate conception of Matthew's prior published hypothesis, demand a letter (smoking gun) to prove that Darwin knew already, or his friends told him, about Matthew's book that contained the hypothesis he replicated? Surrounded as he was by men who actually read Matthew’s book, Darwin's immaculate conception of the unique, ideas, examples, terms and prose in it is an improbable and un-evidenced claim under the biological and social conditions in which he lived. If Darwin never found and read Matthew's book all by himself, human social intercourse seems like the most likely cause of his conception of the unique and complex ideas and examples within it, which he later replicated.If Darwin's conception of Matthew's unique work was not fathered by Matthew then a supernatural miracle happened. Darwinists claim not to believe in miracles.4. Only a leap of necessary faith in something so improbably unique in history, as Christian belief in the miraculous conception of Jesus of Nazareth, favours belief in Darwin's immaculate conception of a prior-published hypothesis over knowledge contamination being more likely than not. More so, "Darwin's Immaculate Conception" would most surely be a miracle in light of the New Data about who really did read Matthew’s book. This is because some (e.g. Chambers and Low) who Darwin knew, after reading and citing Matthew's book, influenced Darwin. And others, (e.g. Selby and Loudon), after reading Matthew's book, influenced and facilitated the work of Darwin’s acknowledged influencers Blyth and Wallace.
The All Saints Company Ltd: http://www.allsaintscompany.org/saint/charles-darwinAttribution
St Charles Darwin, Never Rejected God in the Origin of Species, as did the first-to-be-first heretical Originator Patrick Matthew in 1831
Unless they recant their necessary faith in the miracle of the dual immaculate conception of a prior published theory, Darwin's Darwinists, with ludicrous hypocrisy, have far more in common with Christ's Christians' faith-need for a virgin birth than they currently care or dare let themselves realize.
Matthew's original discovery of natural selection enabled us to reject the old faith-based explanation of multiple miraculous creations of new organic species. Should not then its prior publication allow us to, logically, rationally and under all the now newly known circumstances of its replication, reject the Darwinist faith-based explanation of their namesake's and Wallace's miraculous independent re-creation of the same new species of scientific theory?
Rational scientists and others who call into question the likelihood of a human child being immaculately conceived cannot 100 percent prove that Catholics and other Christians are wrong about it happening in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. Similarly, I cannot 100 per cent prove that Darwin of Down and Wallace of The Old Orchard did not each immaculately conceive Matthew's prior-published hypothesis. But any Darwinist wishing to claim that as a defense cannot rationally sidestep the fact that we now newly know far more about the likelihood of which human beings "impregnated" the minds of Wallace and Darwin than who more likely than not impregnated the womb of "The Virgin Mary."
(c) Darwin and WallaceAttribution
Miracle Double Immaculate Conceptions of the Blessed Virgins Darwin and Wallace of Matthew's prior published hypothesis of natural selection
Darwin's Darwinists - just like Christ's Christians - absolutely need to demand "faith belief" in an unevidenced and highly improbable act of immaculate conception. I wonder whether it was perhaps his realisation of this truism that led the Darwinist atheist Richard Dawkins to bravely and honestly re-tweet to over one million followers my link to a blog post I wrote explaining this.
A Trumpet from the Rooftops to Richard DawkinsPublic Domain
Richard Dawkins re-tweets my blog post that criticises him for fallacy-spreading
Perhaps Darwin's Christian wife understood that this "veracityquake" would one day happen, when in 1863 when she wrote an honest letter to Matthew:
‘With regard to Natural Selection he [Darwin] says that he is not staggered by your striking remarks. He is more faithful to your own original child than you are yourself.’
As Emma Darwin understood, in the 19th century, a child could have only one biological father. Her husband Charles had bought into the family home, and raised as his own, the infant hypotheses Matthew abandoned, deliberately, in the literature for another to find and nurture into a theory. The child had a label attached, so that any finder might know its parent cared enough for it be cuddled and cared for better than he was able or cared to do (Matthew 1831):
'In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments.’
Whether or not Matthew was Christian is probably debatable. He was certainly not pro-Catholic when he wrote: (Matthew 1831 p.131):‘
The dread of change in Catholic countries - the proscription of almost every new work treating of science - the complete submission of the mind to the religious authorities, “bearded men becoming little children” even to the letter - the consequent general abandonment to sensual enjoyment - the immense number of holidays and the shoals of meddling priests are a great bar to improvement an insurmountable one to manufacturing pre-eminence.’
We have seen in the text quoted higher above that in 1831 Matthew rejected the notion of multiple divine species extinction and repeated divine creation of each new species. In 1839, in his second book, Emigration Fields, he carried his unique radical bio-political ideas forward with his original Peace Corps proposal for Christian missionaries to help Western colonial forces keep aboriginal populations under control.
He wrote (Matthew 1839, p146):
‘By means of this peace corps, a great well combined, effort should be made to christianize and civilize the whole native population of the group; forming normal schools, and even colleges, for the instruction of native teachers, as well clergymen as schoolmasters, and especially instructing the rising generation in the English language.’
On Flowers
Patrick Matthew wrote poignantly to Charles Darwin to repent his own selfishness and to explain his thoughts on the subject of plants and other species types, in 1862 and again in 1871:
Matthew (1862):
‘Your's in tracing out the admirably balanced scheme of Nature all linked together in dependant connection—the vital endowed with a variation-power in accommodation to material change. Altho' this is a grand field for contemplation, yet am I tired of it— of a world where my sympathies are intended to be bounded almost exclusively to my own race & family. I am not satisfied with my existence to devour & trample upon my fellow creature. I cannot pluck a flower without regarding myself a destroyer.’
Matthew to Darwin: (Matthew 1871):
‘That there is a principle of beneficence operating here the dual parentage and family affection pervading all the higher animal kingdom affords proof. A sentiment of beauty pervading Nature, with only some few exceptions affords evidence of intellect & benevolence in the scheme of Nature. This principle of beauty is clearly from design & cannot be accounted for by natural selection. Could any fitness of things contrive a rose, a lily, or the perfume of the violet. There is no doubt man is left purposely in ignorance of a future existence. Their pretended revelations are wretched nonsense.’
As an atheist apostle of the New Data, I am perturbed that Matthew's last known letter to Darwin revealed that the first and only true originator of the theory of natural selection put into writing his belief in intelligent design, albeit 40 years after publication of his famous god-slaying book. But it's a hard and uncomfortable fact, not a soft 'knowledge belief' that he did so. When we each subjectively weigh that very fact, what seems more likely than not on the question of whether or not Matthew believed in a creator?
That is the exact same approach we should take in weighing the New Facts in the story of the discovery of natural selection.
Neither Darwin nor Wallace conceived the child hypothesis of natural selection whilst living on other planets, isolated from the spoken, written, and print-published words of those who had read it in Matthew's prior-published book. On the contrary, they were surrounded, both very close-up by friends and associates and correspondents. and from afar, in the case of Wallace, by his editor, Selby. All of those friends and associates we newly know read Matthew pre-1858. When we weigh that hard fact, subjectively, as we must, what now seems far more likely than not on the question of dual immaculate conception versus knowledge contamination?
Members of the scientific community who think silence is an option to the plagiarism problem in the history of the discovery of the theory of natural selection would be wise to think of what led to the eventual fall of Humpty Humpty - in both nursery rhyme and myth-cracking. Because such wall sitting takes us to the logical conclusion of this story. And that is the Dwakinite meme.
The Dawkinite Analogy
Darwinists have, for over 155 years, credulously deified Darwin as an independent discoverer of a prior-published theory. They have done this at the expense of the reputation of science. Today, the New Data provesMatthew's prior published hypothesis of natural selection was read by those who are known to have influenced Darwin. This hard fact reveals that Darwinists now believe in a highly improbable event, which is the equivalent to Christian miracle-belief in the virgin birth of Jesus. This is Dawkinite!
This new meme is the equivalent of Kryptonite for all those Darwinist atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, who hypocritically blame religions for imposing their superstitions on the rest of the world. One theological question is raised by this argument. Namely, is Dawkinite a highly improbable great ironic gift from the Christian God, given to the world of science, delivered by atheist apostles, as a great explanation by analogy for religious belief in the improbable?
Might a truly loving and cleverer than thou God use atheist Darwinists, such as Richard Dawkins, in such mysterious ways, his self-educational wonders to perform? If so, are Patrick Matthew and Richard Dawkins the Christian God's Atheist Apostles?
For more such questions than answers from what may improbably be one of the Lord's Atheist Apostles: Follow The Seer of Gourdie Hill on Twitter .
If you think you can master it and wield it effectively, then please use Dawkinite freely and liberally so that we might all progress to a purer form of truth.
Unfortunately for Darwinists and Wallacists, it does not end with mere painful irony. We must add next to that natural conclusion the other evidences presented in this paper for plagiarism, downright self-serving lies and dishonesty by Darwin and Wallace. Add to the mixture also, the motive supplied by their stated personal ambitions to make a unique mark on the question of species along with the corruptive Arago Effect rule of priority that being first is everything.
Does science fraud now seem more likely than not?
Whatever you conclude, there are far more brand new and hard fact evidences pointing that way in Nullius than are sampled here.
The literature and society celebrate Wallace and Darwin as claimed independent discoverers of natural selection - yet no one can now prove that the one true originator Matthew did not, indirectly, or directly, influence them. In reality, all the evidence strongly suggests he did. Darwin and Wallace, were surrounded by naturalists who had read Matthew's book. Darwin replicated Matthew's unique term 'long continued selection'. Darwin and Wallace both replicated Matthew's analogy of artificial selection to explain natural selection. Darwin even replicated Matthew's far from fallacious analogy of trees developed by artificial selection in nurseries versus those in Nature. When Matthew originated that true artificial selecton analogy he called its anagram the 'natural process of selection'. Twenty eight years later, Darwin chose those exact same four words to re-coin Matthew's original discovery the 'process of natural selection' in order to claim it as his own independent discovery. It is patently obvious from these examples alone (and there are far more inNullius) that what was in Darwin's brain was conceived as a result of Matthewian knowledge contamination. Any other explanation must surely take us into the weird realm of Darwin worshipping belief in supernatural miracles of immaculate conception.
It seems to me, in light of the New Evidence, about who Darwin and Wallace knew who had read Matthew's book pre-1858, to be far more than just likely than not that he did influence Darwin and Wallace. And a plagiarism analysis bears this out.
The question of priority is deemed to be of the greatest importance in science (Merton 1957). This is, therefore, in fact, a major issue, not a minor one, for the historical record. Unless the Royal Society of London has voted to change the rules of priority for scientific discovery, in light of my open letter to them , then Matthew already has full priority over Darwin and Wallace.
If Darwin's Darwinists and Wallace's Wallacists wish to claim that their namesake's independently discovered natural selection then the burden is upon them to prove their claim. Busted Galapagos Finch myths and malarial fever cognitive enhancement nonsense aside, they have never come close to doing so. Most surely it seems, they will be hard-tasked to do so now faced by the red in tooth jaws of the hard and sharp New Data about the real origin of Darwin's Origin of Species.
To me, it seems that the only reason Darwinists are stubbornly refusing to accept the importance of the New Data is because, like the Christians of the 19th century, and so many "creationists" of today they have been indoctrinated into loving a deity to such extent that it would be a sin to question their faith in that "god". For Darwinists, Darwin is God. As the deceased co-author of my forthcoming book on Robert Chambers, Iris Macfarlane (1975), wrote in "The Black Hole", quoting from Glanville: "We are baptised into our opinions by our juvenile nurture, and our growing years confirm these unexamined principles."
In the final analysis of the reason for their bias towards Darwin over the man whose ideas he replicated, Christians and Darwinist atheists, such as Richard Dawkins have been baptised into the Church of the Immaculate Conception of a Prior-Published Theory. Consequently, they actually share the need for a leap of faith in miracles.
Perhaps Darwinists do not really love truth, reason, rationality, logic and science? I wonder, could it be Darwin they love most of all?
In 1831, Patrick Matthew turned what was theologically unimaginable into what is today scientifically inevitable. Rationally, logically and judiciously, he deserves to be considered an immortal great thinker in the history of science whose ideas will reverberate down the ages. The longer this inevitability is delayed by those with the power to make it happen, but with a vested Darwinist career saving interest in stymieing it, the greater the Machiavellian guilt of those seeking to deny the importance of the New Data. And the greater will be the Humpty Dumpty embarrassment for British science. The Matthew, Wallace and Darwin priority scandal reveals that the scientific community is not fit to police itself. Bias, self interest and carefully nurtured community-wide credulous belief in a P.R-deified Victorian science hero has served Darwin's Darwniists well for the past 155 years. In real science - at least as an ideal if not a norm- facts trump claptrap every time. In 2014, new facts were discovered that do exactly that.
I don't care what nonsense Darwinists wish to believe about the discovery of natural selection, but I do object to them imposing their beliefs in metaphorical supernatural phenomena on the history of scientific discovery. Why should they be allowed such special privileges, when they object to religions having them?
If there is an intelligent designer God (and of that, as an atheist, I am extremely far from certain), and if it is a supremely intelligent being, who wishes us all to learn by our own mistakes, then it is working in mysterious ways through the world's leading atheist Richard Dawkins and all of Darwin's Darwinists; its wonders to perform. Logically, that would make me its atheist apostle. Now that is "fundamentally" funny - in my opinion. More so, it is amusing because that idea might even be assisting some theologians towards finding additional non-scientific "revealed knowledge." In which case, that disturbing possibility leaves me with a question for Richard Dawkins and all Darwinists: "Do you think that perhaps you should recant, in knowledge purifying light of the New Data, your faith in The Blessed Virgin Darwin? If not, can you explain, in light of the New Data, why your belief in Darwin's "independent conception" is fundamentally different from St Mary's "immaculate conception"?
The way forward
On February 12th, the Americans celebrate Darwin Day, that being the birthday of Darwin, the great replicating-pretender. Where such trends are concerned, they say America sneezes and Britain catches a cold. Personally I don't like catching colds. And like my beloved American cousins, I abhor unfairness and despise hypocrisy. Moreover, I prefer hard fact-led veracity over soft faith-based claptrap. The hard New Facts show that Darwin and Wallace more likely than not caught the theory of natural selection from Matthew. That statement is as true as everything else we scientifically know about what good - refutable if new dis-confirming facts are found and then hard to vary - explanations tell us about how the world operates. Outside of science, and in the realm of religious 'revealed truths' only an acceptable supernatural miracle could have made Jesus the son of "God" by immaculate conception inside of the body of the Virgin Mary. Such a leap of faith has no place in science, least so within a branch of science so closely associated with atheism and anti-faith. In so much bright light of the dis-confirming New Data, I no longer find it tenable to believe in the old Darwinist story of the dual miracle of independent discovery inside the brains of the blessed prior-published discovery virgins Darwin and Wallace.
This position paper has been all about analogies as explanations that have the power to change to world. I would like to end on one. I call it the Darwin's Darwinist Discovery Donkeys Analogy. Humour can be at times a wonderfully effective vehicle for attitude change (see Sutton et al 2007 ), I hope mine will touch the funny bones of some stubborn Darwinists before they suffer the ignoble fate of the honest donkey in the parable.
Patrick Matthew was born in 1790. I propose we choose his birthday, October 20th, to celebrate Matthew Day for his unique, highly influential, immortal and great contribution to knowledge.
(c) Darwin and WallaceAttribution
Miracle Double Immaculate Conceptions of the Blessed Virgins Darwin and Wallace of Matthew's prior published hypothesis of natural selection
If you have not yet read my Darwinist arguments rebuttal's paper, you can find it here.
