Plagiarising Science Fraud

Plagiarising Science Fraud
Newly Discovered Facts, Published in Peer Reviewed Science Journals, Mean Charles Darwin is a 100 Per Cent Proven Lying, Plagiarising Science Fraudster by Glory Theft of Patrick Matthew's Prior-Published Conception of the Hypothesis of Macro Evolution by Natural Selection
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query dempster. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query dempster. Sort by date Show all posts

Tuesday 28 January 2020

On Jim Dempster and Patrick Matthew

Dempster's work is essential to understand just how much of Matthew's theory and prose was plagiarized by Darwin and Wallace: HERE



Paul Harris Publishing, the company that published this, Dempster's first book on Patrick Matthew went in receivership two years later (Glasgow herald 1985). Eleven years later Dempster (1996) re-published, with the much maligned vanity publisher ‘Pentland Press’ what was essentially the same book, quite expanded, clarified and edited to remove some of the unnecessary repetition of the first. This seminal work is the world’s first and most comprehensive account of Matthew’s (1831) work. Unfortunately, Pentland Press collapsed with unpaid debts in 2002 (see Mirror 2002).

If its detailed facts rather than a future collectors item you are after I recommend you buy, Dempster's 1996 later book. However for a few dollars, if I were you, I'd buy a fine copy of this 1983 book, its rare and will increase in value now that Darwin's and wallace's great sceince fraud is proven.

Before the World's greatest science fraud was proven in 2014, Dempster wrote in this book that there is no need to accuse Darwin of plagiarising the work of Patrick Matthew because it is already well established that he acted badly in not citing his influencers in the first edition and other editions of the Origin of Species (Dempster, 1983 p. 64):

‘There is no need to charge Darwin with plagiarism. His scholarship and integrity were at fault in not providing all his references in the Origin: he had after 1859 another twenty years in which to do so. What one can say is that denigration of Patrick Matthew was unwarrantable and inexcusable.’

But if those three sentences do not, in fact, say that Darwin had seen Matthew’s work, replicated it, and then perpetrated a long-running science fraud by never admitting he had prior-knowledge of Matthew’s discovery, what do they say?

However, as Dempster made clear, Matthew also accepted at face value, in print at least, Darwin’s excuse that he had arrived at the theory independently. Consequently, despite Dempster’s able championing of Matthew, Darwinists retained their solution to the problem of Matthew’s prior discovery by affixing him with their mutually approved status of obscure curiosity. Refusing to give the originator of natural selection his due credit for discovering it – no matter how good and complete his hypothesis - Darwinists stuck to their guns – in the teeth of Dempster’s superb scholarship - by claiming that there was no evidence that Matthew had influenced a single person with his discovery. Filling in the knowledge gaps as to what really happened to Matthew’s ideas between their publication in 1831 and Wallace’s, (1855), Darwin’s and Wallace’s (1858) and Darwin’s (1859) replication, Darwinists simply parroted Darwin’s Appendix Myth, Scattered Passages Myth and Mere Enunciation Myth as plausible devices to enable them to accept Darwin’s fallacious tale that Matthew’s ideas went unread by natural scientists until Matthew drew Darwin’s attention to them in 1860. All three of the above myths are now uniquely bust in my own paper (Sutton 2014).

Bibliography and referenecs

Bowler, P.J. (1983) Evolution: the history of an idea. Berkeley. The University of California Press. p.158.

Darwin, C. R. (1837) Notebook B: Transmutation of species (1837-1838)]. CUL-DAR121. Transcribed by Kees Rookmaaker. Darwin Online,

Darwin, C. R. (1842) Unpublished Essay on natural selection. See Darwin Online.org.uk.

Darwin, C. R. (1844) Unpublished Essay on natural selection. See Darwin Online.

Darwin, C. R. and Wallace, A. R. (1858)On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London.

Darwin. C. R. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London. John Murray.

Darwin, C. R. (1861) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (Third Edition) London. John Murray.

Dawkins, R. (2010). Darwin’s Five Bridges: The Way to Natural Selection In Bryson, B (ed.) Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society. London Harper Collins.

Dempster, W. J. (1983) Patrick Matthew and Natural Selection. Edinburgh. Paul Harris Publishing.

Dempster, W. J (1996) Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh. The Pentland Press.

Glasgow Herald (1985) Contract for Paul Harris. June 29th. page 15:

Gould, S. J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Harvard. Harvard University Press. pp. 137-141.

Hamilton, W. D. (2001) Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, D. (2012) A History of Organ Transplantation. Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hopewell, J. (2009) Dempster, William James (1918 - 2008), Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Online. THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND.

Hopewell, J. (2014) Early History of the Treatment of Renal Failure. British Transplant Society.

Info.com. (2014) What was the World’s greatest science fraud:

oekes, M. Porter, K.A. and Dempster, W.J. (1957). Immediate post-operative anuria in a human renal homotransplant. British Journal of Surgery. Volume 44, Issue 188, pages 607–615, May.

Joekes, M. (1997) ISN VIDEO LEGACY PROJECT. http://cybernephrology.ualberta.ca/ISN/VLP/Trans/Joekes.htm
Volumes 3-4. p. 280-295.

Mayr, E (1982) The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.

Shermer, M. (2002) In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Sutton, M. (2014) Internet Dating with Darwin: New Discovery that Darwin and Wallace were Influenced by Matthew's Prior-Discovery. BestThinking.com:

Wallace, A. R. (1855) On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Series 2. 16. 184-196

Wallace, A. R. (1858) Paper presented to the Linnean Society in: Darwin, C. R. and Wallace, A. R. (1858)On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London.






Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2014
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
William James Dempster, the author of 'Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century' (Dempster 1996) , died aged 90 years in 2008. The name W.J. Dempster has gone down in the annals of both the history of transplant surgery and, thanks to this book, the history of the discovery of natural selection.

It in in this book that Dempster ably champions the great contribution to knowledge that was made by Patrick Matthew many years before Wallace and Darwin replicated Matthew's discovery, his name for it and the examples he used to explain it.

Dempster unearths many examples of Charles Darwin’s poor scholarship, lack of integrity and unwarranted, yet self-serving, denigration of Patrick Matthew - the little known true originator of the theory of natural selection.

For the most part the Darwinists sought to bury Dempster and this book in oblivion by way of the silent treatment, but on rare occasion Dempster’s books did attracted scorn from Darwinists. One particular scholar of the history of science reveals his own bias in a laughable example of desperate muddled thinking and failure to understand the importance of questing for veracity in history:

Bowler (1983 p.158):

‘One writer has even gone so far as to hail Matthew as the originator of the modern evolution theory (Dempster 1996). Such efforts to denigrate Darwin misunderstand the whole point of the history of science: Matthew did suggest a basic idea of selection, but he did nothing to develop it; and he published it in an appendix to a book on the raising of trees for ship building. No one took him seriously, and he played no role in the emergence of Darwinism. Simple priority is not enough to earn a thinker a place in the history of science: one has to develop the idea and convince others of its value to make a real contribution. Darwin’s notebooks confirm that he drew no inspiration from Matthew or any of the other alleged precursors.’

Pentland Press’ the vanity publisher of this book collapsed with unpaid debts in 2002 (see Mirror 2002) yet new and second-hand copies can be picked up at bargain process here on Amazon. Snap yours up, because I expect them to become collector’s items now that Darwin's and Wallace's great science fraud was proven in 2014.

‘Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century’ is essential reading for anyone interested in seeing further than the fallacious pens of biased Darwinists who, never having read a word of Matthew’s original book, insist on parroting Darwin’s snaky lie Matthew merely buried his ideas in one or two scattered passages in the book’s Appendix, when in fact Matthew’s (1831) ideas on natural selection run throughout the entire book. By way of fact-based example, it is in the main body of the book that Matthew used the analogy of artificial selection as a heuristic device to explain natural selection and it is where he called upon naturalists to conduct experiment to test his hypothesis. What Dempster failed to discover, however, in all three of his books on the topic, is that it is also in the main body of Naval Timber and Arboriculture where Matthew (1831) uniquely named his breakthrough the ‘natural process of selection’. That finding is important because, Darwin who started the self-serving Appendix Myth, uniquely shuffled those same four words into their only other grammatically correct equivalent: the ‘process of natural selection’. Darwin (1859) used that shuffled term – nine times in the Origin of Species. A year later, he claimed to have had no prior-knowledge of the Originator’s book (see Sutton 2014).

Where Dempster's valuable contribution makes a ground breaking difference is in his reasoned arguments, supported with a multitude of his own new evidence, that 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 referring to him as a catastrophist. Dempster (1996) made this 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. Punctuated equilibrium – essentially Matthew’s discovery - is accepted science today but, as as Dempster (1996; 2005) noted its Darwinist purveyors sought to keep the originator of that theory buried in footnote oblivion. Rampino (2011) explains some of the detail.

However, as Dempster made clear, Matthew also accepted at face value, in print at least, Darwin’s excuse that he had arrived at the theory independently. Consequently, despite Dempster’s able championing of Matthew, Darwinists retained their solution to the problem of Matthew’s prior discovery by affixing him with their mutually approved status of obscure curiosity. Refusing to give the originator of natural selection his due credit for discovering it – no matter how good and complete his hypothesis - Darwinists stuck to their guns – in the teeth of Dempster’s superb scholarship - by claiming that there was no evidence that Matthew had influenced a single person with his discovery. Filling in the knowledge gaps as to what really happened to Matthew’s ideas between their publication in 1831 and Wallace’s, (1855), Darwin’s and Wallace’s (1858) and Darwin’s (1859) replication, Darwinists simply parroted Darwin’s Appendix Myth, Scattered Passages Myth and Mere Enunciation Myth as plausible devices to enable them to accept Darwin’s fallacious tale that Matthew’s ideas went unread by natural scientists until Matthew drew Darwin’s attention to them in 1860. All three of the above myths are uniquely bust (Sutton 2014).

It’s a crying shame too that only after Dempster's death did biologists such Dawkins (2010) and Bowler (2013), respectively, cite and treat more fairly Dempster’s classic ground-breaking work on Matthew's unique contribution to knowledge.

Dempster’s informed reasoning that Matthew should be duly recognized and celebrated as an immortal great of science, with full priority over Darwin and Wallace, is now confirmed by the newly disproved arguments of leading Darwinists such as Mayr (1982), Gould (2002), Shermer (2002), Hamilton (2001) and, most recently, Dawkins (2010). Because their biased Matthew denial opinions have their roots in Darwin’s, newly debunked, self-serving myths and lies (see Sutton 2014).

Most crucially, Dempster’s stalwart scholarship and excellent books on Matthew’s significant contribution to knowledge played a priceless role in helping me to finally set the historical record straight by proving that Darwin and Wallace were enormously influenced by Matthew’s prior-discovery of the natural process of selection before each replicated it while claiming to have discovered it independently.

By so by ably championing Matthew, against all odds, Dempster's stalwart scholarship rescues those who read it from the unquestioning mythical stories told by Darwinists desperate to keep their namesake from veracious scholarly dissection.

As Matthew (1831, p. vii) so presciently wrote:

'...the man who pursues science for its own sake, and not for the pride of possession, will feel more gratitude towards the surgeon, who dislodges a cataract from the mind's eye, than towards the one who repairs the defect of the bodily organ.'

Today, we can, if we so choose, read Dempster in light of the newly discovered facts about what really happened to the ideas in Matthew's book pre-Origin (Sutton 2014). By so doing , we can at last see further than the end of Darwin's fallacious pen, and further than the lingering Victorian smog of faux-skepticism born of adoring Darwinist propaganda.

Biblography and References

Bowler, P.J. (1983) Evolution: the history of an idea. Berkeley. The University of California Press. p.158.

Darwin, C. R. (1837) Notebook B: Transmutation of species (1837-1838)]. CUL-DAR121. Transcribed by Kees Rookmaaker. Darwin Online.

Darwin, C. R. (1842) Unpublished Essay on natural selection. See Darwin Online.org.uk.

Darwin, C. R. (1844) Unpublished Essay on natural selection. See Darwin Online.Org.uk

Darwin, C. R. and Wallace, A. R. (1858)On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London.

Darwin. C. R. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London. John Murray.

Darwin, C. R. (1861) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (Third Edition) London. John Murray.

Dawkins, R. (2010). Darwin’s Five Bridges: The Way to Natural Selection In Bryson, B (ed.) Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society. London Harper Collins.

Dempster, W. J (1996) Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh. The Pentland Press.

Dempster, W. J. (2005) The Illustrious Hunter and the Darwins. Sussex. Book Guild Publishing.

Hamilton, W. D. (2001) Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, D. (2012) A History of Organ Transplantation. Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Hopewell, J. (2009) Dempster, William James (1918 - 2008), Plarr's Lives of the Fellows Online. THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND.[...]
Hopewell, J. (2014) Early History of the Treatment of Renal Failure. British Transplant Society.

Joekes, M. Porter, K.A. and Dempster, W.J. (1957). Immediate post-operative anuria in a human renal homotransplant. British Journal of Surgery. Volume 44, Issue 188, pages 607–615, May.

Joekes, M. (1997) ISN VIDEO LEGACY PROJECT. Volumes 3-4. p. 280-295.

Mayr, E (1982) The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.

Mirror (2002) The Book Worm Turns Up Yet Again.

Rampino, M. R. (2011) Darwin's error? Patrick Matthew and the catastrophic nature of the geologic record. Historical Biology: An International Journal of Paleobiology. Volume 23, Issue 2-3.

Shermer, M. (2002) In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Sutton, M. (2014) Internet Dating with Darwin: New Discovery that Darwin and Wallace were Influenced by Matthew's Prior-Discovery. BestThinking.com.

Wallace, A. R. (1855) On the law which has regulated the introduction of new species. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Series 2. 16. 184-196

Wallace, A. R. (1858) Paper presented to the Linnean Society in: Darwin, C. R. and Wallace, A. R. (1858)On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society of London.

Dr Mike Sutton is author of
Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret
review image








































































































































































































Wednesday 30 March 2016

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.

Sunday 17 April 2016

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.




Saturday 16 April 2016

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.

Thursday 31 March 2016

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".


















Sunday 17 April 2016

Jim Dempster's Correspondence: The Wavertree Letters [Letter 3]


Wavertree 26.8.95

Dear Ian

Many thanks for your last two letters.

Well! I have just sent back the corrected galley proofs plus the index. An index is so easy to compile with a computer.

The 1861 letter of PM is still a mystery. I appealed to the Dundee Advertiser to ask for suggestions as to what the Farmers Newspaper meant to farmers in 1861. I followed up the suggestions which were sent to the Dundee paper but no letter. There is in London a huge Newspaper library which I used previously to dig out Matthew’s letters. He nearly always wrote to that paper the Dundee Advertiser. I approached the library again with the new suggestions but no result. …

 I was pleased to read the paper on Lamarck. It is the only sympathetic attitude to Lamarck that I have come across in the literature since about the 1950s. he has been consistently slandered from Darwin to Richard Dawkins; the latter, I may say, comes in for some stick in the book. He is either ignorant or deceiving the public.

I think Robb has been very kind to me. He has done a lot to bring PM to the notice of people, I asked him some time ago to check in Geology whether PM had ever attended the Pliny Society. No evidence. He will certainly receive a book from me.

 I will be sending off my first contribution to old man Burns. I should get the final galleys soon. The printers have done A GOOD JOB. … The book is now 356 pages plus the index which is another 5 or 6 pages. …

 Do give Min Hunter my regards. I have brought John Hunter into the book quite a lot.

Regards

Jim

~~~

Notes and Commentary by Mike Sutton



In this third letter to Ian Hardie (of the Patrick Matthew Trust), Jim Dempster refers once again to his criticisms of Richard Dawkins scholarship in "The Blind Watchmaker".  A correspondent of Dawkins, Dempster (1996) criticises Dawkins for writing the palpable nonsense that Matthew did not understand what he had written.

 Perhaps Dawkins wants us to believe he thinks Matthew was a blind monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter that was yet to be invented?

Dempster's (1996) book hammers further home the facts of such shamefully pseudo-scholarly Darwinist propagandising against Matthew by Richard Dawkins in several others areas.


Min Hunter was a friend of the late John Matthew (the last surviving direct descendant in Scotland to bear the name Matthew) .

Dempster's last book "The Illustrious Hunter and the Darwin's" focused on John Hunter as a much neglected forerunner of Darwin.











NOTE - Dempster's next letter to Hardie is published on this site already. It is  here: 30.12.94 letter: http://patrickmathew.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Dempster