Jim Dempster's Correspondence: The Wavertree Letters [Letter 2]

Note: This is the second of the 10 transcribed Wavertree Letters from Jim Dempster to Ian Hardie (of the Patrick Matthew Trust)


Wavertree 22.9.94

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your letters of 13.9 and 23.9. …

Your letter of the 13.9 brought a cloud over the horizon. A cloud as ancient as patronage itself. You write “We feel that to succeed it should not be too confrontationist re the Darwin lobby…” this is the problem of “He who pays the piper calls the tune”. I don’t know what you and Mrs Hunter mean. Does it mean that the present book is too confrontationist? If so then you must exclude me from funds out of your trust because that is my style. I found in reading the literature that from Darwin onwards there was a gang up on PM and Lamarck. If by countering their unfair, dismissive remarks I was or am going to be confrontationist I can only bow myself out.

I presume you and Mrs Hunter are familiar with the Darwin Lobbyists. They would not give a tinker’s curse for what I say. When I presented the evidence contained in the Appendix to Jay Gould of Harvard he dismissed PM with “He buried his head in his trees and saw no forest.” In actual fact PM as soon as he had finished his book went into the political aspect of the Appendix, joined the Chartist movement… He was elected the candidate for east Fife and Perth for the Great Convention of 1839. So – do we let Gould’s stupid and ignorant remark go by for fear that the sale of the book will suffer?

The “We feel” sentence continues “… and should set Patrick Matthew in the context of his era… etc”

If you turn to page 19 of my book you will see the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph does exactly that. Throughout the book I have taken the approach of the contextual historian and this is what I am continuing to do with the work I have been engaged on. If by this approach I am to confrontationist I can only say – that’s me.

You see “The man who pays the piper calls the tune” has led to tears in the end over the whole history of patronage. If the piper remonstrates he is unfairly accused of being churlish and looking a gift horse in the mouth. I had hoped this situation would not arise.

 I have mentioned several times to you that the cost of another edition would be high. …

 If you turn to my book you will see the name of Edward Blyth. I have a chapter relating him to PM and Darwin. Another chapter deals with Darwin’s Historical Sketch which includes PM. This Sketch is the most dishonest piece ever Darwin wrote. He makes PM look ridiculous but as I present it now Matthew’s approach is completely modern with all those catastrophes and disappearance of the dinosaurs. There is another chapter on Darwin who learned nothing during five years at University. When he was in Edinburgh for two years he came under the care of Robert Grant who taught him about the fauna of the Firth of Forth, encouraged him to collect invertebrate specimens and demonstrate them to the Pliny Society and since Grant was an enthusiastic Lamarckian Darwin got grounded in that too. Darwin’s comment: the whole thing was a bore and learned nothing. He then went to Cambridge for three years. There he collected beetles and other specimens, went on geological trips with Sedgwick the professor of Geology. Darwin’s comment : the whole thing was a bore and learned nothing. So why did Henslow recommend him as naturalist for the Beagle?

PM comes in for a bit of stick from me over his colonial policy which could not be more brutal and inhuman – but in the “Survival of the fittest” sense exactly what became social Darwinism. If you read Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ the same inhuman conclusions are drawn i.e. the savages will be annihilated and in time to come there will be a hoped for, improved Caucasian people and below them the chimp and gorilla. All other humans would be eliminated.

So I suppose you will designate this contextual approach as confrontationist. So be it. I have found another letter from PM to Darwin which I knew must be around because the reply is in my book. This letter accompanied a review of the Descent of Man by Matthew in the Scotsman newspaper. The central library dug out the review which could have been more critical. Many people were dismayed at the time because Darwin had now changed his mind and says he now realised he stressed natural selection too much in the Origin!

So that’s it for the moment.

Sincerely,

 Jim Dempster

~~~

Notes and commentary by MIke Sutton

Dempster reveals he personally informed the famous Darwinist Professor Gould (Stephen Jay Gould) of exactly what was in the appendix of Matthew's 1831 work, On Naval Timber, regarding the first full hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection, and that Gould merely dismissed the evidence with an off-the cuff propagandising unevidenced dismissal.

We see here also the first evidence in writing (it is clearly and prominently included in Dempster's 1996 book) that Dempster was first to note that Matthew had in fact been correct and Darwin wrong regarding catastrophic meteorological and geological extinction events. Note: Jim Dempster was way further ahead in this regard than Michael Rampino (Rampino 2011), who is generally misattributed with this important discovery - and who attributes Dempster by way of a mere cursory footnote in his famous article on the topic.

In this letter, Dempster refers to Min (Mrs) Hunter - who was a friend of John Matthew (who was a descendant of Patrick Matthew) . The book Dempster is writing at the time of the Wavertree Letters  is  his 1996 'Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century'. The Patrick Matthew Trust was financially assisting Dempster's work. Later in 2005 Dempster published his third book on the topic 'The Illustrious Hunter and the Darwins'.

It is notable that in the letter Dempster outlines that his approach to the topic is deliberately critically confrontational, because he felt that the so called "Darwin Industry"- so as to foster and maintain their impression of Darwin's original genius - was incredibly biased in its effective propagandising  against Darwin's intellectual forbears Lamarck and Matthew.   I have taken the same strategically objective, honest and open stance in my work (Sutton 2014a; Sutton 2014b and 2016). Indeed, feeling that Dempster's superb groundbreaking work on Matthew and Darwin has been for the most part cannily ignored by Darwin scholars my own approach goes further with zero regard for any undue reverence to Darwin, the Darwin lobby, or their credulous Darwin worshipping misplaced sensitivities, poor and pseudo-scholarship, and irrational thinking.

Jim Dempster's Correspondence: The Wavertree Letters [Letter 1]

Jim (W. J) Dempster

For the next 10 days a new blog post will be published each day on the Patrick Matthew blog. Each post will be a letter.

Each letter, published in chronological order, is from Jim Dempster to Ian Hardie. The letters were written during the period when Hardie co-managed the Patrick Matthew Trust.

Please Note: Some details concerning living people have been omitted in order to protect certain minor issues of possible personal privacy and sensibility.  Wherever this occurs the point of redaction is indicated by three full stops in a row "..."

Much of the correspondence concerns Dempster's second book. Dempster, W. J (1996) Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh. The Pentland Press.

PLEASE NOTE All of these letters, published on the Patrick Matthew Blog are the copyright of the Dempster Family Private Archive - (C) All International Rights Reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission. 

Letter 1 (Jim Dempster to Ian Hardie)

Wavertree 20.08.94

Dear Ian

Many thanks for your letter and enclosures. The article for country life I find rather lifeless but let it go. I have written to Fiona about a minor change. When you return the photograph can you enquire whether they can improve the quality. There are sorts of tricks these days. That photo, I think I told you was turned down by American publishers as being of poor quality. If they can send us some better quality prints it would be helpful.

I saw Gribbin’s article in the Sunday Times. I wrote him and complimented him on being hooked on only one reading. Hooker found it the most difficult book he ever read; Huxley has to re-read several times before he was able to point out several mistakes especially Darwin’s opinion that natural selection was always a slow process. It so happens that several months ago I was so appalled at the number of mistakes in the Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins that I wrote him a small essay. It was mainly the usual English diatribe against Lamarck without mentioning that by the 6th edition of the Origin Darwin was won over to Lamarckian ideas. The inheritance of acquired characteristics came from Buffon and not Lamarck. It was Huxley who wrote Darwin to point out that his Pangenesis was what Buffon had written almost a hundred years ago. So – the Darwin Industry (coined by Adrian Desmond) are determined to shield Darwin from Pangenesis and all the other untruths Darwin uttered about his predecessors. I asked Richard Dawkins why he had listed in his bibliography the 1st edition and not the 6th edition. Here is his disingenuous reply.

“I don’t understand why you are ‘surprised’ that I refer to the 1st edition of the Origin. Apart from the fact that the last edition contains the well-known acknowledgement to Matthew, I greatly prefer the first edition. It lacks errors that Darwin introduced, (like Pangenesis) in response to criticisms that we can now see to have been erroneous.”

 Can you spot the similarity?

The piece about Matthew in the 6th edition is in the so-called ‘Historical Sketch’. It makes Matthew out to be an idiot but turns out now to be very modern. I am dealing with this in my current study. I refer in my book to the Huxley – Darwin correspondence about Pangenesis.

Richard Dawkins knew nothing about PM and states that he was taught that PM was ‘an enigma’!

I thank you for pursuing a possible publisher. My big problem is the typing of the manuscript. I had a secretary when I wrote the book but not now. My standard of typing would not be acceptable by publishers. It will be very costly to hire a typist. That is my main problem these days.

I came across in the transactions of the Royal Society another letter from Matthew to Darwin. Matthew had clearly written a review (9.3.71) of the ‘Descent of Man’ (1871) for the Scotsman Newspaper; a copy of the review was enclosed. Darwin wrote back curtly a few words, mainly about his ill-health, as usual, but made no reference to the review and signed off curtly with a ‘yours faithfully’. Even so Darwin did not let up on his rubbishing of Matthew for by February 1872 the 6th edition was published with the Historical Sketch.

So – I wrote to the National Library on George IV Bridge and asked them to track down the review. I have just received a copy. It is a long but very favourable review but Darwin took care not to mention it in his letters.

I have been immersed in a marvellous book – The politics of Evolution by Adrian Desmond. He lives quite near here. He deals with another Edinburgh graduate – Robert Grant – who befriended Darwin when he was at Edinburgh. Told him all about Lamarck, the fauna of the Firth of Forth and encouraged him to present short papers at the Pliny Society. When Darwin returned from the voyage he lived in Gower Street a stone’s throw form the University College where Grant was now the professor of Zoology and preaching or rather lecturing on Lamarckism. Darwin avoided him for the rest of his life and spread untruths about him. Desmond asks why? I think Darwin from the beginning was making sure that his predecessors would be blanked out so that he could claim ‘I owe nothing to my predecessors’. What arrogance! So his predecessors were Herbert Spencer, Lamarck, Robert Grant, Patrick Matthew, Edward Blyth. All these people were subject to Darwin’s malicious untruths which everyone believes. His treatment of Edward Blyth I deal with in my book.

Arthur Keith in his book ‘Darwin re-valued’ asks “why was Darwin so abrupt with Herbert Spencer?”

I have a great deal of typing to do which I find rather boring. I think I now have all the data I need. The local library have been most helpful.

Sincerely,

 Jim

~~~

Notes by Mike Sutton

In fact, Darwin's Historical Sketch was included in every edition of the Origin of Species from the third edition onward (Darwin 1861).  Dempster never got that fact wrong in this letter, it's just that he writes "by the 6h edition" meaning it was definitely in that edition.

It is also important to note that this letter established that Richard Dawkins was well aware of  the completeness of Matthew's (1831) on the topic of natural selection as early as 1994, not least thanks to the correspondence he received from Jim Dempster on the topic.

Re-Branding Darwin IV

"That's a nice book containing the full prior-published theory of macroevolution by natural selection", said Burglar Darwin, "I'll have that." 

When he got home, and without telling anyone, Darwin put the ideas from it into his own book: The Origin of Species.

Read the full story of Burglar Darwin in "Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret"

Re-Branding Darwin III

Get up-to speed with the New Data

Re-Branding Darwin II

Get up to speed with the New Facts: here

Re-Branding Darwin

Science is a way to not get fooled

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

Last September, my friend and co-author of our British Society of Criminology Annual Award winning article >>NetCrime: More change in the organization of thieving   , David Mann, was in the Royal Institution on Albemarle Street, London. There he happened to bump into the famous Australian Scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki   .

Dr Karl, as he is popularly known, was giving a talk on all things science. David Mann, a mathematician and computer science expert, wrote a letter to me to explain what happened next:

"What a coincidence" I thought, because not only am I a huge fan of Dr Karl, but I also happened to have a copy of one of his many books with me! Not just any book you understand, but the one that contains a chapter on Sutton's famous debunking of the Popeye myth!

After an hour or so of being dazzled by Dr Karl's journey through the amazing world of science, I had a quick chat with him, and I mentioned you and he replied "Mike Sutton? Mike Sutton! I know that name!" At which point I produced the book, and luckily he had a pen to sign it with."

Many Great Scientists have Presented their work at the Royal Institution

The "Popeye Myth" AKA the SPIDES (Spinach, Popeye, Iron. Decimal Error Story) , known also as the "Spinach Supermyth", was first fully bust on my Best Thinking blog .

The "Popeye Myth" is classed as a supermyth - because it is a myth, created in good faith, about another myth.

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki 2015,
personal note to Dr Mike Sutton

Dr Karl is pictured below, with pen poised, at the signing the copy of his excellent book, "50 Shades of Grey Matter", which is being opened by David Mann. I am delighted that David Mann and Dr Karl made such a kind gesture. Dr Karl's popular science book, and David's letter, and photographs of the signing, are now treasured family possessions. I am honoured that Dr Karl dedicated an entire chapter in such a great book to the debunking of the Spinach Supermyth.

Of course, Dr Karl is right "Science is a way to not get fooled." But where supermyths are concerned it was bad science, and lack of adherence to scientific rational skepticism, that led to their creation and deep entrenchment by scientists. However, it was strict adherence to scientific principles - particularly three favourites of mine: "Nullius in Verba", "Sutton's Law" and "Follow the Data", which enabled me to debunk those myths, You can see several examples of known supermyths on my website Supermyths.com   . 

The spinach supermyth is interesting, ironic and amusingly educational, but I believe the most important and the most serous Supermyth so far discovered is the Patrick Matthew Supermyth.   

MacmillanAttribution

50 Shades of Grey Matter Book

Mike SuttonAttribution

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki Signing the Spinach and Popeye Chapter for Mike Sutton.

Mike SuttonAttribution

Page Signed for Mike Sutton: with message "Science is a way to not get fooled",

Marketing Darwin

https://t.co/zMuaINHkyA pic.twitter.com/l9z8KO01B4

— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) April 12, 2016

Read what the bastard has found out: Here.

On Darwin's Notebooks and Private Essays

Given that he never began them until 1837, and the appearance of the concept of natural selection does not even vaguely appear in them until 1842, Darwin’s private essays and notebooks do not – contrary to Bowler’s (2003, p. 158) assertion - “…confirm that he drew no inspiration from Matthew or any of the other alleged precursors”. All they actually can ‘confirm’ in that regard is that Darwin "claimed", by the dates written on them alone, that he started writing these notebooks six years after Matthew’s (1831) book was published, and then only after several influential naturalists, who he actually knew, cited it and the original ideas in it. What survives on the pages that not have been torn out of Darwin’s notebooks – and many pages in them have been so destroyed or removed, is that Matthew’s name is not found in any of them. What they further do confirm is that Darwin did read five publications that cited Matthew’s (1831) book (Sutton 2014a). In his 1844 private essay, Darwin replicated Matthew’s original natural versus artificial selection analogy of differences (Sutton 2014a) and demonstrated it by further replicating Matthew’s original trees grown in forests versus those grown in nurseries example (Eiseley (1979). Consequently, the newly discovered facts, and a rational interpretation of their significance, overturns mere biased beliefs to confirm that what we might term ‘Matthewian knowledge contamination’ can no longer be ruled out in the history of discovery of natural selection.

This issue is discussed in far greater depth-with reference to the facts and with full  references to sources to arrive at a rather astounding conclusion in my peer reviewed article: (Sutton 2106)  On Knowledge Contamination: New Data Challenges Claims of Darwin’s and Wallace’s Independent Conceptions of Matthew’s Prior-Published Hypothesis

From "On Knowledge Contamination" (Sutton 2106):

 As an argument that reliable evidence exists to disconfirm evidence that

Matthew influenced Darwin, Bowler argues: “Darwin’s notebooks confirm that

he drew no inspiration from Matthew or any of the other alleged precursors”.

Bowler’s seemingly compellingly plausible argument is worthy of further

examination in light of the independently verifiable facts. And, in light of the

New Data about who we newly know did read the ideas in Matthew’s book, and

most importantly when they read them, these actual facts confirm that Bowler’s

argument is rendered redundant.

To begin with, there is little on natural selection, beyond a mere hint at it, in

Darwin’s (1837) private “Zoonomia” notebook.  Not until his private essays

(1842, 1844), do we see Darwin’s acknowledgement of evidence for the general

process of natural selection. By 1842, Loudon had cited Matthew’s book many

times following his 1832 review. And 1842 was the same year in which Selby

cited Matthew. But it was not until Darwin’s jointly presented paper with Wallace

 that the full hypothesis, which Matthew had prior-published, was written

down by Darwin.

Darwin's "Zoonomia" Notebook B

Following Matthew’s (1860) first priority claiming letter in The Gardeners’
Chronicle, of 7th April, Darwin wrote on 10th April to his friend Lyell that he
had ordered a copy of Matthew’s book. This might be taken as strong confirmatory
evidence that Darwin had never read Matthew’s book or been influenced by
its original contents. Rationally, it is nothing of the sort. Darwin’s letter to Lyell
merely proves, and only then if the proven liar Darwin was then telling the truth,
that he did not have a copy of Matthew’s book in his possession in 1860. Darwin
could easily have prior-borrowed a copy from an associate and made extensive
notes. Or been supplied by others with such extensive notes. He could
just have easily borrowed a copy many years earlier from the London Library,
which was founded in 1841, the same year Darwin joined, and the year before
he penned his private 1842 essay on natural selection. Or Darwin might have
borrowed a copy of Matthew’s book years earlier from Mudie’s Library — founded
in 1842 — because he was a noted keen member of both lending libraries.

There is no mention of Matthew’s (1831) book in any of Darwin’s (1838)
handwritten Books to Read and Books Read private notebooks until Matthew’s
(1860) claim to priority letter was published in The Gardeners’ Chronicle.
However, the old adage that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,
is particularly pertinent in this particular case in light of the new hard
evidence unearthed from the publication record of Darwin’s bad faith regarding
his account of the readership of Matthew’s book. Rationally, therefore, we should,
as objective scholars, no longer simply assume that Darwin did everything
in good faith. The fact of the matter is, and it is facts we must now focus on, that
there is no proof, other than the dates he wrote on them in the privacy of his own
home, that those dates on Darwin’s notebooks and private essays were honestly
written and are therefore accurate. Furthermore, it is a fact that Darwin’s notebooks
are devoid of many pages — due to them having been torn out — and
that much of the remaining text in them has been scribbled out so as to deliberately
render it completely illegible.

So what do the facts enable us to know for sure about the latest possible date
when Darwin’s private notebooks and essays were written? The following bullet-point
timeline of evidence provides the detailed answers:

•On 25th June 1858, Darwin wrote to Lyell that Wallace’s Ternate paper
had nothing in it that was not in his 1844 private essay, which he
claims Hooker read a dozen years earlier. Only if Darwin was telling
the truth in this particular case, that would mean Hooker could only
have read it as early as 1846.

• 29 June 1858 Darwin writes to Joseph Hooker: “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, because
— as explained below — all we have is a letter of 1845, which is
a year after the publication of Chambers’s (1844) Vestiges, in which
Darwin is claiming he had earlier written some kind of private essay,
which he merely claims Hooker had earlier read. The Darwin Correspondence
Project tells us what Darwin had written on that essay, known
as 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”. Significantly, what the Darwin Correspondence
site does not emphasise is that Hooker could not have read
something written by Darwin 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
November 1845: “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. There is no
evidence at all that Darwin subsequently sent Hooker the sketch in the
1840’s. To reiterate: There is no direct evidence at all (other than Darwin’s
1858 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 exists that Hooker saw the essay earlier than
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 Gray: “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

Outside of what was scribbled on paper in his private study, the earliest solid and independently verifiable, dated, hard evidence we have that Darwin actually had written any kind of  private notes or essay on natural selection, at any particular ascertainable point in time, is that he sent a mere abstract of one to Gray in 1857!

Click here to read the above facts  set in the context of my 2016 peer reviewed article on knowledge contamination.

"On Knowledge Contamination" The Download Page Gets 500+ Visits Inside Four Weeks

Great News for me! Inside first month my heretical paper has 500+ download page visits: https://t.co/Ts5EQd4J1m pic.twitter.com/fnK9jn29bp

— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) April 11, 2016