The telling truth on the Patrick Matthew Project
In light of the “New Data ”, I discovered, anyone claiming that the evidence that Matthew influenced Darwin and Wallace is weak should now go and read W. J. Dempster’s (1996) “Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century”.Because on pages 114 and 115 Dempster presents all the text that Matthew, Blyth and Darwin wrote on Matthew’s unique and most powerful explanatory ‘Analogy of Differences between Natural and Artificial Selection’.
Dempster shows how Blyth clearly influenced Darwin, and writes about how crafty Darwin was in concealing Blyth’s influence.
What Dempster never knew, however, is that Blyth’s friend and co-author Robert Mudie was the first to replicate Matthew’s original analogy in 1832, and was also “first to be second” with Matthew’s (1831) unique term and also with his unique ‘Artificial versus Natural Selection Explanatory Analogy of Differences’.
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And this is no more than a tiny proportion of the hard evidence of Matthew’s clear influence on Darwin.
The evidence of Matthew’s influence on Darwin and Wallace – by way of knowledge contamination through Darwins’ and Wallace’s accepted influencers -– via their reading of his prior-publication of the full hypothesis of natural selection – is not weak. It’s completely overwhelming!
Darwnists are dreadfully biased in favor of their namesake and deny the clear facts. They have a long history of such dysology.
For just one hard evidence based example of their dreadful self-serving historical bias against the facts about Matthew’s influence see the blog post I published today on Stephen J. Gould: “just making stuff up” See:
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I include here the relevant text from those pages and then I make further comments:
The hard evidence of Matthew’s influence on Darwin via Darwin’s Replication of Matthew’s Unique “Explanatory Analogy of Differences between Artificial and Natural Selection”, not only the replication of the analogy but the similarity of prose. Darwin actually began The Origin of Species with Matthews unique and powerful analogy of differences! And he used it again on pages 83-84 Darwin (1859, pp. 83-84).
From Dempster (1996) “Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century: Natural selection and Patrick Mathew” pp. 114-115:
‘If we doubt that Blyth had any influence on Darwin it is a coincidence, then, that the very first sentence of the Origin runs as follows: ‘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 form each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.” Blyth’s essay [1835] begins with a classification of varieties – simple acquired, breeds and true. In the first paragraph of his discussion of simple varieties in this sentence: “These simple variations occur both in wild and domesticated animals, but are much more frequents in the latter, and are commonly observed in all breeds and true varieties.’ The observation was clearly well established years before because Matthew had this to say on the subject in Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831): Man’s interference, by preventing this natural process of selection among plants, independent of the wider range of circumstance to which he introduces them, has increased the differences in varieties particularly in the more domesticated kinds.’ And yet, Darwin in his Historical Sketch [1861 – third edition of the Origin of Species onwards] stated Matthew’s book was on a different subject!’
—- Dempster’s text ends —
And what was it Darwin wrote in his 1844 unpublished private essay? Here it is:
“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…’”
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Patrick Matthew: The Biological Father of the Theory of Natural Selection
Yes forest trees no less!
And yet Professor Jones – a Darwinist “expert” – on the BBC this week says that Darwin could be forgiven for not reading a book on that same topic! How on Earth does he get away with it?
Matthew (1831) used hs unique analogy several times with different examples. Here is just one to compare with Darwin’s (1844) replication of the analogy, Not he also – n this example – uses forest trees and those grown in nurseries (plantations) as an example.
Matthew (1831) pages.107-108
‘… in timber trees the opposite course has been pursued. The large growing varieties being so long of coming to produce seed, that many plantations are cut down before they reach this maturity, the small growing and weakly varieties, known by early and extreme seeding, have been continually selected as reproductive stock, from the ease and conveniency with which their seed could be procured; and the husks of several kinds of these invariably kiln-dried, in order that the seeds might be the more easily extracted. May we, then, wonder that our plantations are occupied by a sickly short-lived puny race, incapable of supporting existence in situations where their own kind had formerly flourished—particularly evinced in the genus Pinus,more particularly in the species Scots Fir; so much inferior to those of Nature’s own rearing, where only the stronger, more hardy, soil-suited varieties can struggle forward to maturity and reproduction?’
If this is “weak evidence” that the Scot Matthew influenced Darwin pre-1858 with his prior published full hypothesis of natural selection (that Darwin’s associates (Selby and Chambers) had actually read and cited” then I’m a Scotsman. And I was born in Kent!
Dysology
APRIL 22, 2015 AT 6:22 PM
Only now that we realize that, in addition to prior-publishing the complete hypothesis of natural selection 27 years before Darwin, Matthew (1831) also coined the powerful ‘Artificial versus Natural Selection Explanatory Analogy’, do we finally see the conclusive evidence of Matthew’s massive influence on Darwin. Because in 1831 Matthew coined the world's most powerful analogy to explain his unique discovery of the world's most important scientific theory. So important was that unique analogy – so influential – so powerful – Darwin (1859. p. 7) used it to open “The Origin of Species” when he wrote:
‘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.’
