Edinburgh Evening News 1993

Reference: Thorpe, N. (1993) Back to Basics: New evidence reveals Scot's part in evolution theory: Origin of the thesis. The Edinburgh Evening News. November 6th. 1993.

The East Lothian Courier 1993

Alastair Robertson on Patrick Matthew in the Daily Mail in 1996

Reference: Robertson, A. (1996) Obscure farmer is missing link in Darwin's theory of evolution. Daily Mail. April 15th p.25.

Ivor Smullen on Patrick Matthew, Jim Dempster and Ian Hardie

The Image Below is from the Dempster Private Family Archive

Reference:  Smullen, I. (1994). The First Evolutionist. Country Life. October 6. p. 68.

Why do Darwinists Despise Patrick Matthew? Part 1: the Case of W. T. Calman

Among a host of biologists, and other scientists, William Thomas Calman agreed that Matthew was the first into print with the hypothesis of natural selection  see:

• Calman, W. T. (1912) Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) The Journal of Botany. British and Foreign. pp. 193-194.
• Calman, W. T. (1912a) Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, Naturalist. British Association, Dundee Meeting, 1912. Handbook. David Winter and Son. Dundee. P.451-457. CLICK HERE TO READ.

Yet we see that in the same year that he gave Matthew some of his due credit in published print, in a private letter dated 1908, the zoologist W. T.  Calman provides ample evidence that he appeared to despise Matthew. Why?

The image of the letter below was kindly supplied by the Dempster Family Private Archive.

The letter was written by Calman.

Jim Dempster (1996) has written that it was addressed to Professor D'Arcy Thompson: 

As you can see Calman - a Scot from Dundee - refers to Matthew as a bore in his letter to his mentor Professor D'arcy. But why would he do so?

For one thing, Calman was working at the heart of the English scientific establishment at the time - in the Natural History Museum, London, where he worked as Assistant Curator of Crustacea and Pycnogonida and Keeper of Zoology.  To be elected to the Royal Society, which he was nine years later, in 1921, Calman had to fit in with the prejudices of the so-called scientific establishment. Consequently, no matter what the facts, Calman would in no small part have felt obliged to be seen to conform to the Darwin (FRS) bias-against Matthew.

 I discuss the context of Calman's words - and how they reflect the rules of the so-called "establishment" in my book Nullius in Verba (Sutton 2014) :

Specifically writing about the treatment of Chambers’ Vestiges, Secord so superbly explains why heresy was given the silent treatment in the first half of the nineteenth century that I am obliged to quote some of his excellent scholarship at length:

‘Science in these circles was embedded in codes of gentility, which meant that claims to legislate over nature were unlikely to succeed. As long as the gentlemen of science expressed their views in the appropriate manner, which often meant sticking to their experience except when speaking in confidence, they could believe what they wished on religious and political issues. By regulating their talk and expressing certainty only for specific “facts” in their specific “departments,” men of science could be both polite and authoritative at the same time – something that was not always easy to do. Beyond that, they were no more than ordinary participants in the conversation that defined polite society. The modest social origins of many men of science meant that silence was the most effective way of exercising authority. They spoke to larger issues where consensus already existed. …Neutrality was necessary if science’s claims to absolute truth were not to conflict with the demands of civility. To say more would have been inappropriate and boring.’

For his massive breach of etiquette, those same gentlemen of science saw Matthew as just such a bore; a fact revealed in Dempster’s indispensable book on Matthew (Dempster 1996. p.5):

‘For the British Association[1] meeting at Dundee in 1912 Calman, a deputy director of the Natural History Museum, was given the duty of presenting some facts about Patrick Matthew. Calman’s contribution is largely a translation from the German essay by May (1911). It is clear from a letter sent, prior to the meeting, to D’Arcy Thompson that Calman had little regard for Matthew who is referred to as ‘an old bore’.

In the first half of the 19^th century especially, men of science were looking to become respected and professionalised, looking to carve out a niche in society for their discipline. As Yeo (1984, p.9) explains:

‘…close relationship between science and general cultural debate, together with the insecure status of the scientific community, made the authority of science a significant issue. Scientists had to establish the domain of natural knowledge as their own, and monitor the boundaries between science and religion.’

For that same reason, the rules of the Royal Society stated that its members should discuss nothing about God or politics. And news that was unconnected to the business of philosophy should be avoided at all costs (Gleick 2010).

Calman - like others in the story of Matthew and Darwin - simply never "followed the data" as a good scientist should!

Clearly, Matthew’s book broke every rule in the Royal Society’s unwritten one! Those 19th century rules would most surely have clung on to men such as Calman in the first two decades of the 20th century. That context provides one  possible explanation for why Matthew was treated the way he was. It explains why no one stood up and pointed out Darwin's obvious lies about the proven pre-Origin readership of Matthew's original ideas. And it explains why no one - not Calman, nor any other before I -  did as all scientists should do, which is to follow the data. 

My original findings (see Sutton 2016) proved that seven naturalists - as opposed to none, as the world's leading Darwinists, Darwin himself, Sir Gavin de Beer ad Ernst Mayr claimed - read and cited Matthews ideas - including the (in actual fact) naturalist polymath John Loudon (who Darwin learned in published print at least by 1860 had reviewed Matthew's book in 1832 - noting its originality on the topic of what he actually referred to then as "the origin of species") to Edward Blyth - whose two highly influential papers on organic evolution were published in a journal of which Loudon was the Editor (see my latest peer reviewed paper: 'On Knowledge Contamination: New Data Challenges Claims of Darwin’s and Wallace’s Independent Conceptions of Matthew’s Prior-Published Hypothesis' for all the hard "New Evidence", on this topic. My paper provides further hard evidence, which was arrived at by simply "following the data": Sutton 2016).  

---

[1] The British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Notably 

• D'arcy Wentworth Thompson (FRS) received the Gold Medal of the the Linnean Society in 1938 and was awarded the Royal Society's  Darwin Medal in 1946.
• William Thomas Calman (FRS) was President of the Linnean Society from 1934 to 1937. He was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1946

Dempster's (1996) Earlier Draft of His Chapter 7: 'Charles Darwin's Predecessors'

From the Dempster Family Archive.

The following 13 images are page scans from loose pages that essentially comprise a good earlier draft of Chapter Seven of Dempster's (1996) Evolutionary Concepts in the 19th Century. Anyone comparing this draft with the final product might smile at the typical diplomacy that characterised how Dempster toned his true feelings down between drafts and print. In the final paragraph of Chapter 7 of his published book gone are the harsh words of telling speculation about there being no evidence of Darwin being pretty dim whilst studying at Edinburgh University. 

This material, from the Dempster Private Family Archive, is released into the public domain because it might be of profound interest to any Darwin scholars who have not yet read any of Dempster's superb evidence-led criticism of Darwin's dual lack of originality and abundance of sly self-celebratory dishonesty. Moreover, I expect it may be of value to those interested in studying how Dempster felt compelled to make his criticisms of Darwin more palatable to the scientific mainstream, which some call the "scientific establishment".

Dempster's Letter to New Scientist about Darwin's Apparent Belief in "the Creator"

A designer or a "Creator", what is the difference? So asked Jim Dempster in 1996.

The clipping below is from the Dempster family archive:New Scientist 12th October 1996.

Jim Dempster proves that Darwin apparently believed in a "Creator". Dempster then used that observation to make the point that that this meant Darwin apparently believed in "intelligent design".

Dempster's Letter to the Times about Dennett and Darwin's Dangerous Idea

This clipping below is from the Dempster family archive. There is no date on it. It is from the letters page of the Sunday Times.

In the letter, below, Jim Dempster mocks a review of Daniel Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea' for his ill-informed infatuation with Charles Darwin.

The date of the letter will most certainly have been 1996, because that is the year Dennett's book was first published.

W J Dempster: on 'The Consequences of Punctuated Equilibrium'

The following pages are scanned from the private family archive of the Dempster family. They were first made available to me today (30th March 2016). The scanned text comprises two pages of typed notes and an article on the topic of  Matthew's original conception of the role played by "punctuated equilibrium" in Matthew's original and full hypotheses of macro-evolution by natural selection.

PLEASE NOTE Copyright for the images on this blog post belongs to Soula Dempster (all UK, USA and international rights reserved).

W. J. - (William James)  "Jim" Dempster wrote three books on the history of discovery of natural selection. You can read more about his life and work in science, medicine and surgery here.

The subject of this blog post is Dempster's unpublished draft paper, in the form of an 11 page essay entitled: "The Consequences of Punctuated Equilibrium" . The paper bears no date, However, it was definitely written after the 1996 publication of his second book on Matthew (Dempster, W. J 1996 Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh. The Pentland Press. Because it references that book. 

The  essay appears to be a possible draft forerunner to Chapter 6, which is called The Consequences of Punctuated Equilibria, of Dempster's third book on the topic of the history of the discovery of natural selection:  Dempster, W. J. (2005) The Illustrious Hunter and the Darwins. Sussex. Book Guild Publishing.'  Alternatively, it may be a later - "improved" - version of the same. Consequently, at the time of writing, we have no idea whether this paper was intended for publication as a paper or book chapter, or merely written as a private essay. However, it is described as an "article" in Dempster's letter 5 to Ian Hardie in the "Wavertree Letters" on this blogsite.

Readers should bear in mind that what they are looking at when reading the scanned pages of Dempster's essay is that the work may have been "in progress", for private circulation among peers for comments, or else merely intended for private scholarship purposes. The fact that the last sentence of the first of two pages attached to this essay says: "Now read chapter 7 of my book" suggests that Dempster's text in this blog post is an expanded version of his 2005 published Chapter 6. Moreover, unlike the 2005 Chapter Six, from which it appears to have evolved, this essay refers to "Darwinists", which is not a tone that is characteristic of Dempster's published work, Furthermore, it  harshly notes the bias and ignorance of Darwinists about Matthew's and Darwin's work in this precise area. Most importantly, Dempster's essay deals with the fact that Darwin (1859), but not Matthew (1831), included and embraced the notion of a "creator" at work in the natural process of selection. I am delighted to learn that Dempster noted this fact - ignored by Biased Darwin scholars - because it is one that I emphasise in my book (Sutton 2014).

The following two typed pages were attached to the draft article.

- Dempster's Unpublished Essay - 

Any commentary, in the comments section below, on Dempster's unpublished essay and/or my observations and conjectures regarding it is warmly welcomed.

Jim Dempster's Handwritten Notes on Darwin's Sly Deceptions in the Origin of Species

Dempster red inks on the Origin of Species - reveals the truth of Darwin's wormy deceptions: https://t.co/VP18uvv2Rf pic.twitter.com/O8jZORyLrA

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

Dempster (1985) reasoned with a multitude of his own evidence that Patrick Matthew should be hailed as the true discoverer of natural selection, simply because he most certainly did more than merely enunciate it, he worked it out and published it in detail as a complex and fully comprehensive law of nature. Moreover, Matthew got it right and Darwin wrong when it came to comprehending the impact of geological disasters on species extinction and emergence. Yet, from the third edition of the Origin onwards, Darwin (1861), a follower of Lyell’s erroneous uniformitarianism, jumped at the chance to denigrate Matthew by slyly inferring that he was a (then to be fashionably ridiculed) catastrophist. The following is from Darwin's 1861 Third Edition of the Origin of Species (p. xv):

The differences of Mr. Matthew's view from mine are not of much importance: he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and then re stocked; and he gives, as an alternative, that new forms may be generated “without the presence of any mould or germ of former aggregates,” I am not sure that I understand some passages; but it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the conditions of life. He clearly saw however the full force of the principle of natural selection.'

Dempster (1996) made this part of Darwin's cleverly subtle muck slinging injustice abundantly clear, but if you can find a Darwinist, or any other biologist, admitting as much and citing Dempster then you've found one more than I have. In effect, Darwin was signifying Matthew as among all the outdated believers in the miracle of Noah's Ark! And yet Matthew believed in no such thing. Matthew simply explained natural selection in terms of what is today called 'Punctuated Equilibrium' – which is, then, essentially Matthew’s discovery. Punctuated Equilibrium is accepted science today. However, Dempster (1995; 2005) noted that its Darwinist purveyors sought to keep the originator of that theory buried in footnote oblivion. Rampino (2011) explains some of the detail.

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):

‘Patrick Matthew and Robert Chambers carried out their great tasks single- handed. Without the help on the one hand of his great wealth and on the other of Hooker, Lyell, Lubbock, Blyth, Wallace and many others, it is doubtful whether Darwin, single-handed, could have avoided making a botch of his theory or even whether he could have, had the Origin published. Even so, in spite of all the outside help, he retreated more and more towards Lamarckism.

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.’

Darwinist muck-slinging began after Darwin capitulated to Matthew in the Gardener's Chronicle of 1860

The image below was kindly sent to me by Jim Dempster's daughter Soula Dempster. The red handwriting is her father's. He annotated a copy of the historical sketch in Darwin's Origin of Species, Dempster's copy of the sketch is from the 1872 edition but its the same as that fistpubihed in 1861 from the third edition of the Origin onwards:

Dempster's notes on Darwin's sly Deceptions in the Origin of Species 

Note where Dempster writes "½ sentence missing!". Dempster has spotted that Darwin slyly misled his readers that Matthew believed something, which the facts prove Matthew clearly did not. Note that Dempster writes: "Matthew rejects this in the missing part!"

Because Darwin slyy concealed the context and completeness of Matthew's work, I respectfully disagree with Dempster's view that there is no need to accuse of Darwin of plagiarism. I think that there most certainly is a need to directly name Darwin as a plagiariser, and to do so in no uncertain terms, because, by lying, wriggling, plagiarising  science fraud - by glory theft necessity after 1860 (see Sutton 2016)- Darwin showed only a half a sentence of Matthew's work in order to so deliberately mislead his readership into thinking Matthew simply believed that the population of life was somehow miraculously "re-stocked". 

What matthew actually wrote:

Page 383 of  Matthew (1831) 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture'

Note - most importantly - Matthew's entire first paragraph on page 383 of his book is one long sentence. The first eight words that darwin left out of his explanation of Matthew's original conception of natural selection are crucial to Darwin's devious dishonest portrayal of Matthew as believing only that some form of complex species creation occurred on Earth after a catastrophic extinction event. 

Matthew wrote: 

So what was the "above" that Darwin concealed in his dishonest portrayal? Amongst a great wealth of additional text, but immediately above page 383, -  it is this:

Matthew (1831) p. 381

Readers should note also that Dempster's red ink annotations note that it is very important how Matthew's ideas are different to those of Darwin "Oh yes they are!"  also that  Dempster notes that it is untrue "Not true" that Matthew's original conception of natural selection was contained in a book of an unrelated title and solely in the scattered pages of the book's appendix.  Those Darwinist myths are completely burst - with hard disconfirming evidence - in  my 2014 book "Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret", which - in addition - contains a wealth of original and newly discovered hard and independently verifiable facts that overturn the old paradigm that no one known to Darwin or Wallace read Matthew's original ideas before each replicated them, without citing Matthew - and then excused that unscholarly behaviour by claiming (fallaciously) - and by outright proven lying in Darwin's case - that none read those ideas before 1860. My book is dedicated to Jim Dempster.

You can read more about the work and life of the pioneering surgeon and human organ transplant scientist Jim Dempster Here.

Jim Dempster