David Douglas, Scone Palace and William Hooker: The 'Douglas, Hooker, Matthew Hypothesis'

David Douglas

The Douglas fir tree is one of the most loved of forest trees. It is named after the plant collecting explorer botanist David  Douglas.  Born in 1799, Douglas was - from the age of 11 -  an apprentice gardener at Scone Palace, where he stayed for seven years.  He was befriended by William Hooker - then Professor of botany at Glasgow University. With Hookers assistance in 1823, he  took up employment with the Horticultural society of London.

Douglas Fir

From 1823 onwards, Douglas went on many plant collecting expeditions  and corresponded regularly with Hooker. Many of those letters are in the Director's Archive at Kew Gardens. Douglas met an ignoble end in Hawaii IN 1834 where he was either gored by a bull after falling into a 'wild bullock-trap  pit' or else - claim some - most likely murdered. But before that event... as the Famous Scots website explains:

'David Douglas returned to London as a hero and was fêted by all. He was made a fellow of the Geological and Zoological Societies of London. But he was not equipped to deal with fame and he had problems writing up his material from his journey despite having a detailed journal written during the expedition.

He travelled to Scotland to see his mother, now a widow, and a seed of the Douglas Fir was planted in the grounds of Scone Palace - which is still growing there (see illustration). He also visited his guide and mentor, Prof Hooker in Glasgow.'

What the story of Douglas teaches us is that Patrick Matthew would have picked up much of his forestry and arboricultural knowledge whilst living at his birthplace of Rome Farm, which sat in the grounds of Scone Palace, where Douglas became a botanist with expert knowledge of forest trees.

Born in 1790,  Matthew, in 1817, inherited the nearby house and orchards of  Gourdiehill at the age of 17. And we know that at some point between 1827 and 1829, Douglas returned to Scone Palace to see his ailing mother.

From this information, we can see that there were two periods of time in which David Douglas and Patrick Matthew might possibly have met. It is important to note: at least at the time of writing, however, we have zero evidence that they ever did meet.

In the period 1810 - 1817 Douglas was an apprentice gardener and forester at Scone Palace.

Born at Rome farm in 1790, and living nearby at Gourdiehill, Matthew could have met Douglas at any point between 1810 (when Douglas was 11 and Matthew 20) and 1817 (when Douglas was 18 and Matthew 28). 

In the period 1827- 1829 they might have met when Douglas was aged 28-29 and Matthew aged 37.

What is most intriguing about the Douglas connection to Matthew is that they were neighbours. Moreover, both lived at nearby seats The Palace of Scone being the aristocratic seat of Lord Mansfield (more on him and his family links to Matthew here), and Laird Patrick Matthew's being his place as a member of the landed gentry and scottish nobility with ancestral links most likely (according to the very latest unpublished research on the topic by Patrick Matthew's third great grandson Major Howard Minnick) going back to Robert the Bruce and Admiral Lord Viscount Duncan.

Douglas and Matthew were neighbours for two significant overlapping windows of time. Both were hugely interested in arboriculture and general botany. Both published major works on that topic. Both had significant links with Scone Palace.

Most intriguingly, in the story of  Patrick Matthew, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, is the fact that William Hooker was mentor to both Douglas and Wallace!

We know that Wallace (1855 and 1858), like Darwin, replicated Matthew's (1831) original discovery of the full hypothesis of natural selection and his unique artificial versus natural explanatory analogy of differences - claiming to have done so independently of Matthew's prior- publication, despite the fact it is newly discovered (Sutton 2014) that the editor of the journal that published Wallace's Sarawak paper on evolution had years earlier read and cited Matthew's book. And we know that the naturalist Loudon - who reviewed Matthew's book in 1832 wherein he wrote that Matthew appeared to have something original to say on the 'origin of species' was well known to William Hooker and a friend and co-author of William Hooker's best friend the botanist John Lindley. Most notably, William Hooker was the father of Darwin's best friend and botanical mentor Joseph Hooker and Darwin also met William Hooker.

Conclusion and the way forward 

It is just possible that we might learn from what survives of the correspondence of David Douglas - particularly with William Hooker - that evidence exists to 100 per cent prove William Hooker was aware of Matthew's original ideas on the origin of species before Darwin and Wallace replicated them. I think this is certainly something worth investigating further. Let's call it the Douglas, Hooker, Matthew Hypothesis.

Perth Public Library Banned the Most Important Book in the World

On April 21st 1860 The Gardener's Chronicle published Matthew's second letter on the topic of his claim to priority for his (Matthew 1831) prior-published discovery of natural selection.

In this letter, Matthew responded to Darwin's letter of reply to his first letter in the Gardener's Chronicle. Darwin's letter of reply contained Darwin's lie that no naturalist had read Matthew's ideas before Darwin claimed to have independently discovered and then published them in 1859, which was his excuse for replicating them without citing Matthew. Of course, it is now newly discovered that seven naturalists did read and then cite Matthew's book pre-1858 and that Darwin/Wallace knew four of them and three (Loudon, Chambers and Selby) played major roles at the epicentre of influence and facilitation of the work of Darwin and Wallace (see Sutton 2014).

In this letter of reply to Darwin's letter of reply, Matthew wrote:

'I had occasion some 15 years ago to be conversing with a naturalist, a professor of a celebrated university, and he told me he had been reading my work “Naval Timber,” but that he could not bring such views before his class or uphold them publicly from fear of the cutty-stool, a sort of pillory punishment, not in the market-place and not devised for this offence, but generally practiced a little more than half a century ago. It was not least in part this spirit of resistance to scientific doctrine that caused my work to be voted unfit for the public library of the fair city itself.'

                                           Matthew, P. (1860b) ‘Letter to the Gardeners Chronicle. Nature's law of                                                selection’, Gardeners' Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, (12 May) p.433.

As Dempster explains in his excellent book the "fair city" is the nickname Scots give to the city of Perth. It has been called that since the publication of Sir Walter Scott's (1828) book 'The Fair Maid of Perth'. And there is only one 'fair city' in Scotland.

Here then, we can see that in addition to the fact that from his first letter, and now from this second published letter, Darwin was informed by Matthew himself that the original ideas on natural selection in Matthew's book had in fact been read (not unread by anyone  as the modern myth has it) but by two naturalists - John Loudon and an unnamed naturalist professor. This factual information puts into perspective the pseudo-scholarly  nonsense written by Darwinists that Matthew never understood what he had discovered because he never 'trumpeted it's heresy from the rooftops' in the first half of the 19th century (e.g. see here).

I wonder if any other public libraries elsewhere in world also banned Matthew's heretical and seditious book?

You can view a Prezi presentation on Darwin's lying, plagiarising science fraud by glory-theft here

Full second Matthew letter to Darwin  from the Gardener's Chronicle 1860.

Further Reasons why Darwin and Hooker would have Despised Patrick Matthew

In a earlier blog post (here), I showed that the correspondence of Charles Darwin and his best friend Joseph Hooker reveals both men would have despised Matthew for using his discovery of natural selection in a bio-socio-political treatise against the monopoly of power held by the British aristocracy.

In this blog post I reveal that both Darwin and Hooker further despised writers - such as Matthew - for holding forth in print on the subject of species when, unlike Darwin, Hooker and Wallace they had not first embarked on epic journeys across the globe for the purposes of exploration and specimen collecting.

As Yeo (1984, p. 24) explains 

 "Licence to theorize was denied to those who had not accomplished significant scientific work in a specialized area."

 Both Matthew and his book failed to meet any of the requirements for notability invented by the Victorian gentlemen of science. For theorizing without a license, they most surely despised him.

In one of his surviving letters to Darwin, Joseph Hooker revealed his own self-serving opinions on who ought and ought not to be permitted to so much as even discuss the subject of species. Hooker pompously proclaimed that nobody had the right to pronounce on the subject of the origin of species unless they had, coincidentally, just like his best friend Darwin, researched a great many varieties and brought many back from different parts of the globe (Hooker 1845):

"And now for species. To begin, I do think it a most fair & most profitable subject for discussion, I have no formed opinion of my own on the subject, I argue for immutability, till I see cause to take a fixed post…  I still maintain, that to be able to handle the subject at all, one must have handled hundreds of species with a view to distinguishing them & that over a great part,—or brought from a great many parts,—of the globe."

Just as Darwinists today have invented their weirdly stubborn and unofficial made-for-Matthew reasons for denying him greatness, Hooker got up to exactly the same guilt-neutralizing mental tricks. And most intriguingly, we can see in the following quotation that he used the word "enunciated" in order to dismiss the value of evolutionary concepts published in the Vestiges, which is the very same word that Darwin later used with great success to conceal the fact of his reliance upon Matthew's origination (Hooker 1845a):

 "I called Watson a renegade for starting with the motto 'omne ex ovo' which I took in its vulgar sense of 'species are constant' & finishing almost an avowed believer in Progressive development, as enunciated & upheld in the already defunct 'Vestiges.'"

The newly discovered fact (Sutton 2014) should not be allowed to pass without comment that the anonymous author of the Vestiges - similarly despised by Hooker - was Robert Chambers. His book was Alfred Wallace's greatest influence and was said to have 'put evolution in the air in the first half of the 19th century'. Significantly, Chambers was one of seven naturalists who read and then cited Matthew's book containing the full hypothesis of natural selection. Chambers went on to meet and correspond with Darwin in 1847 - which represents  just one of several of the first detected routes for Matthewian 'knowledge contamination' of Darwin's brain with Matthew's prior published discovery of the natural process of selection.

Conclusion

Here then we see further hard evidence that can be used to explain exactly why Darwin and Hooker colluded to engage in Darwin's lying plagiarising science fraud by way of glory theft of Matthew's original discovery. 

Challenging the assumption of authenticity: Sticking with Facts, There is No Actual Proof the Proven Serial Liar Darwin Wrote a Word on Natural Selection Until 1857

Many trusted scientists have shocked the world by falsifying their data (e.g see: David Friedrichs 2009 for some examples). Shockingly, it is newly discovered that Charles Darwin, the much loved scientist of legendary (now mythical) honesty, fabricated facts in order to be awarded the mantle - by his influential friends and associates - of independent great original discoverer of Patrick Matthew's prior-published discovery of natural selection.

To date (4th January 2016) Darwin's biographers and other commentators have taken at face value the dates Darwin wrote on and in his private notebooks and essays as valid evidence of when they were written. They have done so in order to make the argument that those who went into print before Darwin did not influence his 'independent discoveries' of the same prior-published ideas. In this blog post I challenge logic and reason of this mere 'assumption of authenticity'. The challenge to belief in Darwin's essential honesty is made in light of the facts that Darwin is proven to have lied many times in order to successfully position himself above others whose ideas he replicated and passed-off as his own,

(1)  Darwin's book 'The Voyages of the Beagle' was first published in 1839, but sold poorly. Switching publishers, he inserted swathes of new text in the 1845 second edition of the Voyages of the Beagle without a word of explanation. This conveniently created the false impression that he was interested in the question of the evolution of varieties and the origin of species whilst on the Galapagos Islands and elsewhere on his travels on the HMS Beagle - rather than when he actually became interested many years later from studying the published work of other authors. (Here)

 (2) And we know Darwin lied blatantly in 1860, 1861 and thereafter  about the readership of Matthew's prior-publication. (Here).

(3) And Darwin  told a total of six lies to corrupt the history of the discovery of natural selection. (Here).

The time for celebration of Darwin's honesty and originality has been brought to an end by disconfirming facts 

In the blog post I reveal that outside of Darwin's handwriting on the documents the Darwin family and others turned up from his home years after his death, that there is no independent evidence that this proven serial liar (who, incidentally, was as a very young child, according to his own private essay, an attention seeking inventor of deliberate falsehoods) really did write anything on natural selection before 1857. It is important that we admit to ourselves that anyone who was capable of the science fraud deceptions and lies that Darwin is 100 per cent newly proven to have perpetrated in letters and publications from 1860 onward would be equally capable of creating in his own private study an easily faked false paper trail by adding false dates to his unpublished notebooks and essays. Such faking the paper trail behaviour is standard practice in many white collar crimes - including science fraud This is a very painful reality to grasp. But the facts of what we do absolutely know and what we actually don't absolutely know do speak for themselves,  We owe it to the veracious history of the discovery of natural selection to never again enter another credulous Darwin worshipping, assumption of authenticity, 'state of denial'. Our watchword should be nullius in verba.

In 1857, two years after seeing Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper, Darwin sent what he said was merely an abstract of a larger essay  (which nobody had seen at the time) on the topic to Asa Gray. In 1858, the following year, soon after he had seen Wallace's Ternate Paper, Darwin sent an essay to Joseph Hooker. Darwin claimed to have written it as early as 1839 and had it transcribed in 1844. But there is no independently verifiable proof whatsoever that he did any such thing.

Given the proof of his lying plagiarising science fraud by glory theft, outside of any Darwin-love 'states of denial' we should no longer take anything he wrote at face value, because Darwin is 100 per cent proven to have been a lying, scheming and selfish dishonest rogue.

Here are the only independently facts of the matter. We must stick with the facts only in the story of the discovery of natural selection

• 25 th June 1858: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2294.xml Darwin writes to Lyell that Wallace's Ternate paper has nothing in it that was not in his [1844] essay that he claims Hooker read a dozen years earlier (if Darwin was telling the truth - that would mean Hooker read it in 1846).
• 29 June 1858 Darwin writes to Joseph Hooker https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2298.xml;query=2298;brand=default. He writes: 'But you are too generous to sacrifice so much time & kindness.— It is most generous, most kind. I send sketch of 1844 solely that you may see by your own handwriting that you did read it.' This letter, however, is not proof of the date Hooker read it and no proof of the date it was given to him] all we have is a letter of 1845  (a year after the publication of the Vestiges) that he has written some kind of essay.
• The Darwin Correspondence Project tells us what Darwin had written on the "sketch of 1844" :'CD refers to the extensive table of contents prefixed to the fair copy of his essay of 1844 (DAR 113). On the third (unnumbered) page, he wrote in ink: ‘This was sketched in 1839 & copied out in full, as here written & read by you in 1844’. CD probably refers to an occasion in 1845 when he invited Hooker to read his manuscript (Correspondence vol. 3, letter to J. D. Hooker, [5 or 12 November 1845]). See also n. 4, above.'
• What the Darwin Correspondence site does not emphasise is that Hooker could not have read something in 1844 when he only first told Hooker about its existence in 1845! He did so in a letter to Hooker of 5 or 12 Nov 1845 http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-924 : 'I wish I could get you sometime hence to look over a rough sketch (well copied) on this subject, but it is too impudent a request.'
• There is no evidence Hooker replied to confirm any of this. 
•  To reiterate: There is no direct evidence at all (other than Darwin's letter telling Hooker he did read it a year before Darwin even mentioned it to him!). There is no supporting letter of reply from Hooker. So no evidence Hooker saw the essay until 1858! The earliest solid dated evidence we have that Darwin actually had written any kind of essay is that he sent a mere abstract of one to Gray in 1857!
• On 5th September 1857, Darwin wrote to Asa https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-2136.xml;query=2136;brand=default: "You will, perhaps, think it paltry in me, when I ask you not to mention my doctrine; the reason is, if anyone, like the Author of the Vestiges, were to hear of them, he might easily work them in, & then I shd have to quote from a work perhaps despised by naturalists & this would greatly injure any chance of my views being received by those alone whose opinion I value.—"

Conclusion

There is no independently verifiable evidence whatsoever that Darwin definitely wrote a word on natural selection before 1857! This does not constitute any kind of evidence that Darwin fabricated the dates on his essays and diaries, But it is evidence that all we have is our belief in his honesty that he didn't. This is an important point, because Darwin is a newly proven lying plagiarising science fraudster by glory theft. Darwin could have doctored all other dates on the private essays and notebooks in the privacy of his home. And Hooker - as we have seen in his signed approval of the 1860 and 1861 lies Darwin wrote that no naturalists read Matthew's ideas - was quite prepared to collude in Darwin's scheming deliberate lies.

Robert Chambers's best selling book on evolution the Vestiges of Creation was first published in 1844. I originally discovered that In 1832 Chambers cited Matthew's book (See Sutton 2014). Darwin's correspondent and associate Robert Chambers - persuaded Huxley to defend Darwin in a historical debate against Bishop Wilberforce.

Chambers and Darwin met and corresponded in 1847 and thereafter engaged in further correspondence. In 1847 (See Letter from Darwin to Chambers Feb 28th 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.

Darwin told Lyel he thought Chambers was the author of the vestiges (see his March 1847 letter to Lyell and in his Feb 1846 in Letter to Hooker  Darwin is quite convinced Chambers is author of The Vestiges. And by 18th April 1847 Darwin tells Hooker he is now convinced Chambers is the author of the Vestiges. And being more circumspect in
June 1848 - Darwin speculates with Lyell that Chambers is the author of the Vestiges of Creation. 

So what we know for sure here - for an independently verifiable fact is that:

• Chambers read the first full publication of the theory of natural selection and then cited it in 1832.(See: Chambers, R. (1832) in Chambers, W. and Chambers, R. Chambers's. Edinburgh Journal. William Orr. Saturday March 24th. p. 63). 
• Chambers then met and corresponded with Darwin in 1847. That is an entire decade before we have any absolute proof that that the proven liar wrote a word on natural selection.
• The route for plausible and possible direct knowledge contamination of Matthew's ideas- orally - from Chambers to Darwin existed in 1847. This is an entire decade before we have any absolute proof Darwin wrote a word on natural selection!
• In 1859 Chambers wrote a review of Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species. In that review he was the first person after Matthew to write Matthew's original term 'natural process of selection' - the very term that Darwin (1859) was first to four-word-shuffle into its only possible grammatically correct  equivalent 'process of natural selection'! (see Sutton 2014).

Natural Selection and the Aristocracy: Evidence Hooker and Darwin would have Despised Matthew's Sedition on the Topic

The Aristocrat Admiral Fitzroy -
Captain of the HMS Beagle

1831  - as I explain in my 2014 book Nullius in Verba    - was a time of great social violence and uncertainty. Britain was in the shadow of the French Revolution and feared a similar uprising from the lower classes. Riots were breaking out all over the country. Richard Dawkins's (2010) ludicrous claim that Matthew (1831) should have, in the first half of the 19th-century, trumpeted the heretical and seditious original ideas on natural selection in his book from the rooftops, in order to deserve to be rightfully recognized for them over Darwin's replication of the same, is laughable in light of the historical facts - not least the fact that Matthew (in 1860) informed Darwin and others in published print of a naturalist who feared to so much as quietly teach the original ideas on natural selection in Matthew's book  for fear of pillory punishment.

The problem for veracity in the history of discovery of natural selection is that powerful members of the Darwin-worship-cult operate from a position of preferred bias. We see just one example of this in Dawkins's conveniently context-free wishful thinking, dressed up with self-delighted deliberate delusion, and then spin-presented as fact for hungry consumption by those credulous enough to take him at his carefully crafted 'expert' word.

 In this blog post, I reveal why it would be that Joseph Hooker and Charles Darwin would have despised Patrick Matthew for going into print linking natural selection to his libertarian chartist reform politics, not just because it was against the codes of 19th century gentlemen of science to link politics with science (see Secord 2001) but also because they disagreed with his politics and his socio-political ideas.

In 1831, in On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, Matthew explained how in peaceful as opposed to times of war the cultural legal inheritance system and and social class system was unnaturally ensuring that the 'best' human 'stock' was unable to attain a dominant power of occupancy in human society - as they would in a state of culture-free nature - that would ensure those with  'superior' mental and physical characteristics bred most efficiently and effectively to improve human 'stock'.

On Naval Timber and Arboriculture
 by Patrick Matthew
1831

In the following texts from pages 2 to 4 of his 1831 book it is important to note how at the bottom of each  of the pages Matthew refers the reader to the book's Appendix - which contained his ideas on natural selection in a far more concentrated style of writing for humans and for all species of animal and plant.

So much here then for the great Darwinist myth started by Darwin in 1860 as a lie    that Matthew buried his important ideas on natural selection in the book's appendix!

Royal Society Darwin Medal Winner, Ernst Mayr, published the myth - discoverable as such at the time    - that Matthew's (1831) unique ideas were completely unread by biologists pre-1858. Moreover, he also published another myth that the information in the Appendix of Matthew's book was unrelated tot he subject of its title: Naval Timber and Arboriculture.

(Mayr 1982 p.499):

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

In Matthew's text, we see also that far from a book on Naval Timber being inappropriate for its subject matter on natural selection it was the perfect subject matter in relation to humans - ships being made of timber at the time and ships being essential for Britain's trade, maintenance of its huge empire and for conquest and settlement. Without these aggressive and competitive activities Matthew saw that the aristocracy would degenerate and that most of the most able beings among the lower classes would be kept down in a permanently artificial state of brutal and unfulfilled toil.

In Matthew's text, we see also that far from a book on Naval Timber being inappropriate for its subject matter on natural selection it was the perfect subject matter in relation to humans - ships being made of timber at the time and ships being essential for Britain's trade, maintenance of its huge empire and for conquest and settlement. It is no coincidence that Matthew took his original ideas forward in his second book (Matthew 1839) 'Emigration Fields' where he (scandalously for the time) recommended British settlers intermix with the New Zealand Maori.

 So much here, also then, for the Darwinist myth that Matthew failed to take his original ideas on natural selection forward after 1831!

In addition to his out-group status among the gentlemen of science, Matthew did himself no favors among the English by inventing hilarious mock-varietal terms like "the English

Patrick Matthew

Clown." 

Matthew turned upon the gentry and middle classes. He saw them in a bio-political light and employed natural selection arguments against the artificial selection of hereditary entitlement on grounds that it served to synthetically block the contribution to society of potentially better people trapped in lower social classes .

Matthew (1831, p. 365) wrote :

 "The law of entail, necessary to hereditary nobility, is an outrage on this law of nature which she will no pass unavenged—a law which has the most debasing influence upon the energies of a people, and will sooner or later lead to general subversion…"

And (p. 390): 

"…the great mass of the present population requiring no guidance from a particular class of feudal lords, will not continue to tolerate any hereditary claims of authority of one portion of the population over their fellow-men; nor any laws to keep up rank and wealth corresponding to this exclusive power. It would be wisdom in the noblesse of Europe to abolish every claim or law which serves to point them out a separate class, and, as quickly as possible, to merge themselves into the mass of the population. It is a law manifest in nature, that when the use of any thing is past, its existence is no longer kept up."

In 1861, after Matthew had confronted Darwin in order to claim priority for his ideas, which Darwin claimed not to have read - despite the fact it is newly discovered (Sutton 2014) Darwin's, his father's Hookers, Jenyns, Lyell's and Wallace's associates, friends and influencers had read and cited them. Moreover, it is 100 per cent proven that Darwin lied when he later wrote that no naturalist had read Matthew's original ideas before he replicated them.

In 1862, Darwin and his best friend Joseph Hooker corresponded on the topic of natural selection and the British aristocracy  

Joseph Hooker

Although no mention of Matthew is made, in this exchange of letters we can see that Hooker was adamantly opposed to Matthew's arguments.

Letter from Hooker to Darwin 31 Jan – 8 Feb 1862

'I wrote you a frightful screed the other day about the development of an Aristocracy being the necessary consequence of Natural Selection—& then burnt it—so you must take the will for the deed & be thankful! If ever we meet again we will talk it over—'

Letter from Hooker to Darwin 19th Jan (1862) 


'...after all why should we expect better things from a nation of upstarts— Our Aristocracy may have been (& has been) a great draw back to civilization—but on the other hand it has had its advantages—has kept in check the uneducated & unreflecting—& has forced those who have intellect enough to rise to their own level, to use it all in the struggle— There is a deal in breeding & I do not think that any but high bred gentlemen are safe guides in Emergencies such as these.'

And

If there is any thing at all in force of circumstances & Natural Selection it must arrive that the best trained, bred & ablest man will be found in the higher walks of life—true he will be rare, but then he will be obvious & easily selected by a discriminating public— When got to, he is removed above a multitude of temptations & conditions that prove the ruin of 910 of the rising statesmen of a lower class of life— Your ``Origin'' has done more to enhance the value of the aristocracy in my eyes than any social political or other argument.

Letter of reply from Darwin to Hooker (25th Jan 1862)

In this letter we see that Darwin in part agrees with Hooker, but is in a state of denial over

Charles Darwin

meritocracy and gets it right on the notion of primogeniture being anti-natural slection (which is a Matthew notion from 1831) .

'Your notion of the aristocrats being ken-speckle,  & the best men of a good lot being thus easily selected is new to me & striking. The Origin having made you, in fact, a jolly old Tory, made us all laugh heartily. I have sometimes speculated on this subject: primogeniture is dreadfully opposed to selection,—suppose the first-born Bull was necessarily made by each farmer the begetter of his stock! On other hand, as you say, ablest men are continually raised to peerage & get crossed with the older Lord-breeds—& the Lords continually select the most beautiful & charming women out of the lower ranks; so that a good deal of indirect selection improves the Lords. Certainly I agree with you, the present American row has a very toryfying influence on us all.—'

Conclusion

Here then we see why Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker had every reason to wish to see Matthew's book buried in oblivion. This would explain why in 1860 he knowingly countersigned Darwin's letter  of reply to Matthew's claim to priority in the Gardener's Chronicle in order to validate Darwin's lie that no naturalist had read Matthew's book pre-1858 - when he - like Darwin - knew that the famous naturalist John Loudon had reviewed it.

Hooker, like Darwin, feared that Britain might become what he called "...a nation of upstarts...".

Matthew knew that leaders come naturally from 'upstart stock' and, therefore, in the greater interests of of our species, should not be artificially kept down.

No wonder the powerful scientific elite and their toadying opportunity-sniffing minions have sought to keep Matthew buried in oblivion these past 185 years.

Patrick Matthew: Wikipedia at last does the right thing and ends disgraceful censorship of facts

185 years ago to this day, 1st January 1831, the greatest scientific discovery of all time was published. Blacks of Edinburgh and Longman and Co of London published Patrick Matthew's famous hypothesis of natural selection.The great idea was contained in his remarkable book 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture   .' . It was the first complete explanation of macroevolution by natural selection.

Matthew's 'natural process of selection' was written as a hypothesis for the origin of species in both the main body of his book and in its appendix.

Attribution

On Naval Timber and Arboriculture by Patrick Matthew (1831)

Today, I am delighted to see that on this New Year's Day 2016, Wikipedia editors have at last overthrown their membership's earlier active involvement in a synchronised 'state of denial' of facts by the Darwin Publishing Industry, Royal Society, Linnean Society and British Association for Advancement of Science. Because, today, Wikipedia editors have finally stopped censoring the truth by deleting independently verifiable and significant facts and have instead added to the Wikipedia Patrick Matthew page    the details and significance of my original BigData facilitated discovery, published by ThinkerBooks (Sutton 2014   ) that naturalists - who influenced and were well known to Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace and their influencers, friends and facilitators - in fact did read and also cited pre-1858 - Patrick Matthew's (1831) full prior publication of the hypothesis of natural selection years before Darwin (1858,1859) and Wallace (1855 and 1858) replicated it, along with Matthew's original terminology (for example, Darwin uniquely 4-word shuffled Matthew's original term 'natural process of selection', into 'process of natural selection' ) and original explanatory examples - such as Matthew's original 'artificial versus natural slection analogy of differences', which Wallace (1858) replicated in his Ternate paper and Darwin (1859) used to open the first chapter of The Origin of Species.

Attribution

Proof Darwin Lied and Engaged in Fraudulent Glory-Theft

Public Domain

The Royal Society Darwin Medal

Wikipedia's honesty on this hugely sensitive and embarrassing issue for the international scientific community is a huge breakthrough in spreading the veracity of the New Data, because both Darwin and Wallace fallaciously excused their replications by claiming no one had read Matthew's (1831) original ideas before they replicated them. Moreover, the Darwin Industry, led by such figures as the esteemed Royal Society Darwin Medal winners Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayr (among many others) have gone into peer reviewed print to promote that fallacy - started as a deliberate lie, written by Darwin in 1860, who had been informed by Matthew (1860) that the exact opposite was true.

Thinker Media IncUsed only with express written permission

Nullius in Verba

We can only hope that members of the powerful scientific establishment, and their minions, with a vested interest in protecting their reputations and the reputations of their award winning members and peer reviewers - alive and deceased - will not delete the facts on Wikipedia, and that if they do that Wikipedian editors will have the moral courage to stand up to them to ensure they do not in 2016 continue their 155 year legacy of corrupting the history of the discovery of natural selection.

We are gifted with a moral sense and It is a pleasure for me to wish Wikipedian editors and Darwinists the pleasure of doing good. Unfortunately, I - like Patrick Matthew before me - can only wish it.

I don't expect the Royal Society will be awarding me in 2016 - or anytime soon - their Darwin Medal for originally discovering and 100 % proving that Darwin was a lying plagiarizing science fraudster by glory theft.

The States of Denial Paradox

We must remain watchful of 'states of denial'. As Cohen (2001)    explained, it is a great paradox that such denial protects our state of mind from unbearable truths, yet ultimately it is our greatest threat.

Public Domain

Patrick Matthew; The Seer of Gourdiehill

This is what Wikipedian editors added to their page on 1st January 2016 (correct at 13.06 GMT)

Later opinions

Although Darwin insisted he had been unaware of Matthew's work, some modern commentators have held that he and Wallace were likely to have known of it, or could have been influenced indirectly by other naturalists who read and cited Matthew's book.

• Ronald W. Clark   , in his 1984 biography of Darwin, commented that "Only the transparent honesty of Darwin's character... makes it possible to believe that by the 1850s he had no recollection of Matthew's work".[10]   This begs the question   , for it assumes he did read Matthew's book. Clark continues by suggesting: "If Darwin had any previous knowledge of Arboriculture, it had slipped down into the unconscious".[11]   [12]   
• The criminologist Mike Sutton'    has published research as a paper presented in 2014 to a British Society of Criminology    conference proposing that both Darwin and Wallace had "more likely than not committed the world's greatest science fraud by apparently plagiarising the entire theory of natural selection from a book written by Patrick Matthew and then claiming to have no prior knowledge of it."[13]    On 28 May 2014 The Daily Telegraph    science correspondent reported Sutton's views, and also the opinion of Darwin biographer James Moore    that this was a non-issue, and it was doubtful "if there was any new evidence had not been already seen and interpreted in the opposite way."[14]    Sutton published a 2014 e-book    Nullius in Verba: Darwin's Greatest Secret presenting his argument based on "new Big Data analysis", which he said uniquely shows that contrary to the prior belief that no naturalists had read Matthew's ideas before 1860, seven naturalists cited his 1831 book in the literature, four were well known to Darwin, and three (Loudon, Selby and Chambers) had in his view played major roles influencing and facilitating the pre-1860 work of Darwin and Wallace on natural selection.[15]    Sutton's (2014) original research revealed that Loudon was editor of the journal that later published two of Blyth's (1835) [16]    and (1836) [17]    papers on evolution, and that Selby was editor of the Journal that later published Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper on evolution.[18]    Sutton (2014) [15]    claimed that it was significant that Chambers cited Matthew's book in 1832,[19]    and went on to write the best selling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation    in 1844.[20]   

Happy New Year Best Thinkers: Stay Vigilant. never allow dysology to flourish. "Fight the States of Denial Spectrum in 2016"

Dysology.comAttribution

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

Happy New Year Royal Society

New year trumpet from the rooftops to The Royal Society from a criminologist who will never win the Darwin Medal. pic.twitter.com/54cJz2cNcx

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

Darwinists in a State of Synchronized Denial

'The familiar usage of the term 'denial' refers to the maintenance of social worlds in which an undesirable situation (event, condition, phenomenon) is unrecognized, ignored or made to seem normal'.

                                                                  Cohen, s. (2001, p.51)


In my last blog post The States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis: Does All Biased and Prejudiced Scholarship Cause and Nurture Hate Crime?, I asked  whether Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayr would have been awarded Royal Society Darwin Medals had they published on the topic of the discovery of natural selection by writing the truth they must have known (as the world's leading experts on the topic) that the naturalist botanist and biologist John Loudon did read Matthew's (1831) prior published discovery of natural selection before Darwin's (1858 and 1859) - supposedly independent - replication of it.  Loudon - who was well known to Darwin's best friends - then went on to edit two of Blyth's influential articles on evolution. Blyth was Darwin's most prolific informant. Moreover, Darwin knew Loudon's work well and his personal copies of Loudon's books are heavily annotated with Darwin's scribblings.

Instead, of writing the truth, de Beer and Mayr simply parrotted Darwin's blatant lie that none read Matthew's original ideas on natural selection before Darwin replicated them.

Furthermore, in that last blog post on this topic, I asked also why it is that Mike Weale (2015) in his Linnean Society article elected to steer away from any critical discussion of the significance of the New Data (that pe-1858, in addition to Loudon three more of Darwin's and Wallace's, associates friends, facilitators and influencers had read and cited Matthew's book and original ideas on natural selection). Weale was fully aware of the New Data (data which I uniquely discovered) because we had corresponded at length on the topic. And yet Weale wrote no more than a simple and completely unevidenced evasive statement that  - in his mere opinion - the evidence is weak that Darwin was influenced by Matthew. How such a weak statement was permitted to pass unchecked in a peer reviewed science journal should beggar belief. The fact that many Darwinists no doubt would not agree with me on that point is pertinent to the topic of 'states of denial', in my mere opinion. Would the Editor and peer reviewers for the Linnean Journal have ever allowed Weale to reveal the facts of the New Data about Darwin's lies about Matthew's readership in their publication? Would any biologist dare try?

Stanley Cohen's (2001) book 'States of Denial' provides us with some interesting observations, which

might provide sound explanations for the behaviour of the above biologists and their peer reviewers.

When considering the applicability of Cohen's explanations for why the significance of important uncomfortable facts are ignored or treated with  'canny unresponsiveness' (Cohen, 2001 p.41), readers should perhaps bear in mind the fact that Darwin is considered 'scientific royalty' by both the Royal Society and the Linnean Society organisations and that he was a multiple award winning member of both. Darwin's grandfather and father before him and his close friends and admirers were all members - as were his and their relatives after his death.

Cohen (2001, p.45):

'...distortions and and self-delusions are most often synchronized - within families, intimate relations or organizations. Whole societies have unmentioned and unmentionable rules about what should not be openly talked about. You are subject to a rule about obeying these rules, but bound also by a meta-rule which dictates that you deny your knowledge of the original rule.'

The leading Darwinist who have written to me - in confidence - warning me about how my bold criticism of Darwin and his Darwinists will seriously harm my academic career and that no peer reviewed biology or history of biology Journal would ever publish the New Data  about who we now newly know did read Matthew's ideas before Darwin and Wallace replicated them- will most certainly know exactly what Cohen meant when he wrote (Cohen, 2001, p. 45) generally on such synchronization of individual and organisational 'states of denial': 

'They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play the game, of not seeing that I see the game.'

Cohen's work allows us to speculate that no Royal Society Darwin Medal is ever going to be awarded to anyone who publishes the truth about how Darwin lied and cheated Matthew out of the glory due to him for discovering natural selection and influencing other scientists on the topic - who went on to influence Darwin on it. Moreover, the unstated rules of the painful disconfirming facts 'denial game' will dictate that no peer reviewed biology journal will ever publish and allow critical discussion of the dreadfully embarrassing New Data, which punctures all the myths supporting the debunked old premise of Darwin's and Wallace's independent discoveries of Matthew's original prior-published discovery, and his explanatory examples.

In 2014, in Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret , I revealed that several of Darwin's and Wallace's friends and influencers did read Matthew's original ideas and explanatory examples before Darwin and Wallace replicated them and then claimed in their fallacious defence that no one read them before they did so.

I don't expect the dreadfully biased  Royal Society will award me with a Darwin Medal for proving that its namesake was a plagiarizing science fraudster by glory theft and that its past recipients were in a 'state of denial' that enabled them to parrot Darwin's lies in order to continue his corruption of the history of discovery of natural selection from beyond the grave. Neither do I expect any biology journal to publish the facts I originally discovered that so embarrass the published work of its editor/s, peer reviewers and esteemed collected 'expert' authors.

Sad Conclusion

Cohen's States of Denial confirms the Frozen Donkey Hypothesis where the Darwin Industry and all its deluded servants are concerned. Shame on them all! History will not treat them well for their cowardly and pseudo-scholarly dysology.

NOTE If you found this blog post thought provoking you may be interested in seeing how these ideas are taken forward in my later post on blind-sightedness as a neuroscience explanation for how Darwin scholars all missed plain and highly significant facts that were literally right under their noses as they read them (Here)