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) 

The Darwinist's Comfort Zone

There is a link to Darwinists on this topic. It is in the conclusion. Before we get there, here is how I arrive at it:

 On Christmas Eve, I commissioned my friend the Nottingham portrait artist Gabe Woods to paint an oil on canvas picture of the metaphorical 'comfort zone'.

I want this picture to use as a teaching device for the small minority of students who complain that we are making

Mike Sutton
In my comfort zone
in Nottingham, England.

them think too hard. Honestly. I'm serious. This actually is a student complaint these days.

"Only when you leave your comfort zone," I always inform such uncomfortably-brain-hurting students, "do you ever learn anything. Be glad, therefore, to be uncomfortable in your university education."

Furthermore, I say:

"Would you otherwise wish to pay so much for what you already know - or could find out without our expert help? We are here not so much to impart knowledge - but to help you think. And good thinking - 'best thinking' is uncomfortable."

Gabe and I discussed some ideas as to how he might fulfil this brief. I've no idea what we are going to end up with. I want it to be something students can be asked to go and pay a visit to. Something they will stand before, contemplate and be - hopefully - moved and inspired by.

Meanwhile, I decided to use the BigData-IDD method    to find the origins of the term.

At the time of writing (28.December, 2015) the shameless plagiarizing editors of the unreliable so-called encyclopedia Wikipedia have no idea when the term was first coined.

I discovered that once again I can get back further than the etymological experts with my BigDada-IDD technique. For example, the best-selling etymologist David Wilton writes   :

'comfort zone, n. When introduced in 1923, this term referred to home heating. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the phrase began to be applied metaphorically.'

Wilton is right about the built environment heating origins. But the term occurred in print at least a decade earlier than his best efforts could detect - in the 'Heating and Ventilating Magazine' Building Systems Design, Volume 10, (1913) on page    30:

ESTABLISHMENT OF A COMFORT ZONE. Before working very long, it became evident that there was a temperature and humidity range within which the occupants of the rooms were comfortable.

In my opinion, far more interesting, however, is that the extremely rare phrase 'comfort's zone' occurred first, and once only, in a poem of 1819. In 'Aonian Hours and other Poems' by W. H. Wiffen:   

Attribution

Is this the etymological origin of 'comfort zone'?

Oxford Dictionaries online    has a good explanation of the concept of the comfort zone metaphor:

(a) A situation where one feels safe or at ease or settled. (b) Method of working that requires little effort and yields only barely acceptable results: if you stay within your comfort zone you will never improve.'

The notion of the 'comfort zone' is useful for thinking about how 'states of denial' help people live with uncomfortable facts.

An interesting publication on the metaphor of the comfort zone

• From Comfort Zone to Performance Management   

Conclusion and the way forward for Darwinists

The notion of the 'comfort zone' sits well with Cohen's (2001) explanations of 'states of denial'. My research into Darwin's and Wallace's plagiarizing science fraud by glory theft of Matthew's original prior publication of the full complex hypothesis of natural selection reveals that Darwinists of the present are behaving exactly like those of the past in refusing to leave the comfort zone state of fact denial .

Mike Sutton's States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis

What Might Possibly be the Impact of the Current States of Denial of the New Discovery of Matthew's influence on Darwin's and Wallace's Influencers?

Stanley Cohen's (2001) 'States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering   ' explains how people deny the significance of sufficient evidence that something is happening or happened in the past. Cohen explains how people do this with regard to a range of things such as marital infidelity, alcoholism, terminal illness, child abuse and genocide:

'One common thread runs through the many different stories of denial: people, organizations, governments or whole societies are presented with information that is too disturbing, threatening or anomalous to be fully absorbed or openly acknowledged. The information is therefore somehow repressed, disavowed, pushed aside or reinterpreted. Or else the information 'registers' well enough, but its implications - cognitive, emotional or moral - are evaded, neutralized or rationalized away.'

Stanley Cohen (2001) States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. p. 1.

Public Domain

Linking Cohen's ideas on 'states of denial' with Sykes's and Matza's (1957) Classification of the Techniques of Guilt Neutralization    provides a powerful combination of explanatory frameworks that helps us to understand how bias is the beginning of the spectrum of dysology that leads ultimately to the capacity to create hate crime in human societies.

Attribution

If the logic of Sutton's 2015 'States of Denial Spectrum Hypothesis' stands up and if it is not disconfirmed by evidence regarding how hate crimes emerge and flourish, then - for example - the current evolutionary biology micro-cultural 'state of denial' of the existence and significance of the New Evidence (Sutton 2014   ) about who did read Patrick Matthew's (1831) original ideas on natural selection before Darwin and Wallace (1858) replicated them is a social problem in need of a solution. And if it is, then dreadfully biased historical scholarship in the field of evolutionary biology is just one among the great multitude of examples of published poor scholarship, in all fields of enquiry, in need of rather urgent attention.

Dysology.comAttribution

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

A note on 'states of denial' and the scientific community's belief in the version of events supplied by evolutionary biologists on the discovery of natural selection.

Evolutionary biologists have got themselves into an embarrassing "State of Denial" about the newly discovered sufficient evidence that Matthew did influence Darwin and Wallace..

The literature record proves that Darwin lied by writing the very opposite to the fact we 100% know he knew to be true when. in 1860, Matthew informed him in writing that two naturalists had read Matthew's (1831) original ideas on natural selection. One - the famous naturalist John Loudon - cited him. Darwin's published lie in response to these facts was that Matthew's ideas had been completely unread. And Darwin convinced his readers by that very lie that Matthew could not have influenced him or Wallace or any of their pre-1858 influencers.

Darwin's lie was malevolent (Cohen p, 22) because he knew all the facts but blatantly lied to conceal the truth (here). According to Cohen, such convincing lying reinforces the liar's own denial of the real facts (Cohen, S 2001 'States of Denial' page 31).

Incidentally, besides the fact his 1831 book is newly discovered to have been cited by seven naturalists pre 1858 (as opposed to the Darwinist version that none read his ideas) the originator of natural selection, Patrick Matthew, most likely influenced Herbert Spencer (via Robert Chambers - who is one of those seven naturalists). See here   .

The New Data that proves there were routes for knowledge contamination from Matthew's 1831 ideas to Darwin and Wallace via the four naturalists they knew who read Matthew's book and cited it pre-1858. In fact, they cited it years before Darwin or Wallace published a word on the topic. Cohen (p. 22) helps us interpret what this means:

'Denial is always partial, some information is always registered. This paradox - or doubleness - knowing and not knowing is the heart of the concept. It creates what Wurmser nicely calls 'Pseudo-stupidity.'

And we have seen plenty of pseudo-stupidity so far in the mass media and on various social media with various attempts to spin the obvious significance of the new facts into a Darwinist comfort blanket of denial that they have any significance at all - despite the fact they completely puncture the myth upon which Darwinists have built their paradigm of belief in Darwin's and Wallace's claims to have each independently discovered Matthew's prior-published original ideas. Those same ideas we now newly know did influence Darwin's and Wallace's facilitators, influencers and friends who not only read but cited them in the newly re-discovered literature. See: here   .

It seems to me - after reading Stanley Cohen's excellent book "States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering' - that such biased scholarship combines to create an enabling environment for all kinds of dangerous quackery and claptrap, as well as a dysological pseudo-scholarly soup in which hate crime can grow and flourish. If this turns out to be the case, then evolutionary biologists - writing disproven fallacies on the history of discovery of natural selection - are just one micro-culture of scholars who are unwittingly (or perhaps half-wittedly) making the world a dangerous and unpleasant place in which to live.See: here. I believe we all have a duty to ensure such pseudo-stupidity does not prevail in the world of science and history of discovery.

Key points from Cohen's 'States of Denial' on the question of the significance of the newly discovered fact that other naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace did read Matthew's prior-published ideas on natural selection before Darwin and Wallace replicated those ideas and then claimed in their defence that no naturalists had read them before 1858.

• "Why though is it a 'paradox' that denial relieves us from immediate anxiety, but that we must 'renounce its comforts' to remain alert to long-term dangers?" (p.31)[Note: I think my States of Denial Spectrum answers this question].
• In 1860 Matthew, wrote two letters to the Gardener's Chronicle to inform it editor and readership that he had - 27 years before Darwin and Wallace - had published his original discovery of the entire complex hypothesis of natural selection and his original coining of the artificial versus natural selection 'analogy of differences', which perfectly explains it. Both letters were published. Darwin (1859) and Wallace (1858) replicated both. In his first letter, Matthew informed Darwin that the internationally famous botanist/biologist and polymath naturalist John Loudon had reviewed his book. Darwin knew Loudon's work well. His pre-1858 notebooks are jam packed with references to his work - some of which Darwin heavily annotated. Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker knew Loudon and his work well - pre-1858 he to referenced that work many times and, reviewed it highly in the press and corresponded in praise of Loudon. That review contained the following line:(Loudon, 1832: 702-703) 'One of the subjects discussed in this appendix is the puzzling one, of the origin of species and varieties; and if the author has hereon originated no original views (and of this we are far from certain), he has certainly exhibited his own in an original manner . Darwin replied to Matthew's letter with a lie - claiming the opposite to what he had informed by Matthew - he wrote that no naturalist had read Matthew's ideas:" I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr Matthew's views, "Darwin's 1860 letter of reply was published in the Gardener's Chronicle. Matthew wrote a second letter to Darwin - correcting him by making it very plain that another naturalist had also read his original ideas but feared teaching them because they trespassed on the territory of natural divinity, which dominated science in the first half of the 19th century. Matthew (1860) wrote back and the Gardener's Chronicle published his second letter: 'I notice in your Number of April 21 Mr. Darwin’s letter honourably acknowledging my prior claim relative to the origin of species. I have not the least doubt that, in publishing his late work, he believed he was the first discoverer of this law of Nature. He is however wrong in thinking that no naturalist was aware of the previous discovery. 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 practised a little more than half a century ago. It was at 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. The age was not ripe for such ideas, nor do I believe is the present one,..' Darwin responded to this second letter with his same lie. Following Matthew's detailed information to the contrary he wrote a private letter To the famous French naturalist Quatrefages de Bréau in his letter of April 25, 1861 Darwin lied:"I have lately read M. Naudin's paper; but it does not seem to me to anticipate me, as he does not shew how Selection could be applied under nature; but an obscure writer on Forest Trees, in 1830, in Scotland, most expressly & clearly anticipated my views—though he put the case so briefly, that no single person ever noticed the scattered passages in his book." Then in 1861 in the Third Edition of the Origin of Species - and in every edition thereafter, Darwin continued that exact same great self serving lie about Matthew's book, and who read the ideas in it. That third lie corrupted - for 155 years - the history of the discovery of natural selection. Darwin (1861) wrote in the third edition of The Origin of Species -despite being informed of the exact opposite by Matthew only the year before - the following lie:' Unfortunately the view was given by Mr Matthew very briefly in scattered pages in an Appendix to a work on a different subject, so that it remained unnoticed until Mr Matthew himself drew attention to it in the Gardener’s Chronicle.' These are clear lies by Darwin because as Cohen (2001,p, 37) explains, in relation to lies in general, they are assertions that are known to be untrue. They were written with an intention to deceive and dupe the world about the facts and the false intentions of the liar - Charles Darwin.
• Darwin's best friend - Joseph Hooker - approved Darwin's lying letter of reply to the Gardener's Chronicle, signed, re-dated it and forwarded it to the Editor at Darwin's insistence. Hooker, who had earlier in 1858 misled the Linnean Society into believing Wallace gave his permission for his Ternate paper to be read before the society in accompaniment with Darwin's, knew Loudon was an internationally famous naturalist and yet he approved Darwin's lie. Why?. We may speculate that Hooker was possibly engaged in an act of what Cohen p, 40 refers to as ' self-deception'. : "So long as they remained ignorant of the details they could 'say later 'We didn't know'". Perhaps Hooker knew there were facts to the contrary, but was deliberately ignorant of the details of those facts?. In this role Hooker played in the story of Matthew and Darwin, he may have sought to ensure he remained willfully ignorant of exactly what Loudon had written in 1832 about Matthew's original ideas.'
• Alternatively, Hooker knowing colluded in a great cover-up with Darwin in order to help his best friend commit the World's greatest science fraud by way of plagiarising glory theft of the influence of the originator Matthew on the scientific community. This might be so, since I originally discovered in 2014    that Loudon went on to edit two journal articles on the topic of organic evolution written by Blyth (1855, 1856). And Byth was Darwin's prolific informant and influencer. For Darwin or Hooker to admit that Loudon cited Matthew's original ideas would mean admitting that 'knowledge contamination' routes existed between Matthew's 1831 book and Darwin's and Wallace's supposedly independent replications of his original ideas and explanatory examples.
• We know Darwin acted in 'bad faith' by lying that Matthew's bombshell ideas were unread before he replicated them, and that Hooker may have been acting in similar bad faith. But what of other Darwinists? Cohen (2001, p.40) wrote of how the majority of Germans in WWII must have known that something dreadful was being done to the Jews but that they chose, as an act of 'bad faith', not to want to know the details. In that way, they both knew and did not know that something dreadful was happening. They were in a particular 'state of bad faith denial' Perhaps, by way of analogy, the Royal Society Darwin medal winners Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayor were acting in bad faith when they simply parroted Darwin's great lie that Matthew's ideas were unread by anyone/any biologist. Being the World's leading experts in the field we might be forgiven for insisting that they must surely have read Matthew's two l1860 letters to Darwin about two naturalists who had read his original ideas. Remaining ignorant of the details whilst parroting Darwin's lie suggests de Beer and Mayr were both in a 'state of denial' - either as an act of deliberate bad faith - or else by 'active denial' (Cohen 2001, p. 32) involving 'plugging leaks' in the story of Darwin's and Wallace's claimed independent discoveries of Matthew's original ideas with deliberate lies. In light of what I have uniquely discovered, it would be an act of bad faith for us not to ask the Royal Society: 'Could de Beer and Mayr (or any other Darwin Medal winner) win the Darwin Medal by writing the dreadful truth about Darwin's lies about who really read Matthew's ideas before Darin replicated them? If not, why not?
• In light of my original (Sutton 2014)    discovery that, as opposed to the prior 'knowledge claim' that no one known to Darwin or Wallace read Matthew's original ideas on natural selection before they replicated them in 1858, that seven naturalists read them - four known to Darwin/Wallace and three (Loudon, Chambers and Selby) at the epicentre of influence on their work on the same topic - read and cited Matthew's book pre-1858 - it would be an act of bad faith for us to fail to investigate the private journal and correspondence archives of those seven naturalists (and those they knew) to see whether Darwin or any of his closest associates (such as Lyell, Joseph and William Hooker, Wallace, Huxley or Jenyns etc) knew about Matthew's original discovery pre-1858.
• In light of the 100 per cent proof that - as opposed to none - we now know that there are several newly-unearthed routes of potential knowledge contamination of Matthew's original ideas into the pre-1858 minds of Darwin and Wallace via their influencers, it is arguably an act of bad faith, therefore for other scholars (e.g.Weale 2015   ) to deny the significance of the New Data by simply, without evidence, or critical argument, dismissing its significance by merely claiming that the evidence that Matthew influenced Darwin and Wallace is simply "weak" and not, therefore, worthy of their academic consideration.
• Darwin's expert biographer, James Moore (2014)    responded in the national press to the original news that I had discovered naturalists who did read and cite Matthew's ideas. His response was the knee-jerk dismissal that he doubted I had discovered anything new that had not already been discovered and interpreted in the oppsite direction. Moore's fallacious dismissal (Cohen 2001, p.31) of the facts being anything new might - depending on his state of mind and intentions - be described as (a) 'a psychotic negation of manifest facts'; (b) a 'plugging of leaks' in the orthodox story by lying (Cohen 2001, p.31) (c) a refusal (state of denial by dually knowing and not knowing) refusal to believe it or an inability to 'take it in' (Cohen 2001, p.24.) because, if true, the facts seriously threaten his sense of personal and professional cultural identity

Conclusion and the way forward

There is much in the behaviour of Darwin and his Darwinists that is worthy of further investigation by social scientists interested in 'states of denial', veracity, and plagiarising science fraud glory theft .

The notion of the 'comfort zone' is useful for helping us understand why Darwinists have chosen to be in a 'state of denial' of the uncomfortable facts about their ludicrously deified namesake.  

Newly Discovered Routes for Knowledge Contamination between Patrick Matthew, Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer and Alfred Wallace

Spencer began writing n the topic of evolution in his 1851 book 'Social Statistics', London. John

Herbert Spencer

Chapman.

Patrick Matthew - the originator of natural selection theory - most likely influenced Spencer. As yet there is no evidence he did so directly, but he probably did so via Robert Chambers, who cited Matthew's 'On Naval Timber in 1832' (Sutton 2014).  And we know also that Spencer read Chambers' (1844) Vestiges of Creation before writing on the same topic of evolution.

Afer reading and citing Matthew's book, which contained the full hypothesis of natural selection,  Chambers wrote (anonymously) the best selling book  Vestiges of Creation- which put evolution in the air in the first half of the 19th-century - and had it published in 1844 - seven years before Spencer penned a word on the topic of evolution.

Although he later rejected it in the 1860's, Spencer's earliest work in science, in the 1840's, was on the topic of phrenology.  In this regard, like Wallace he was greatly influenced by Chambers's popularisation of this pseudo-scientific doctrine. For example, in the same year (1844) Chambers's Vestiges was first published, Spencer wrote an article on phrenology for the Medical Times (Spencer, H. (1844) The Situation of the Organ Amativeness. The Medical Times. Vol.10. pp, 305-306).

In 1852, Spencer informed his father that he met with Robert Chambers (see Duncan, D. The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (Cambridge Library Collection p. 64. This was the year after Spencer's first work that touched upon evolutionary ideas:  Spencer, H. (1851) Social Statics, or the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness.

Routes of Mathewian Knowledge Contamination to Herbert Spencer's Brain

Here then we see a clear possible route of knowledge contamination from the originator Matthew to Chambers - to Spencer from Chambers's published work and also from Chambers to Spencer via anything Chambers may have said to him about Matthew's 1831 book. Moreover, we know that Darwin read Spencer's work before publishing his ideas on natural selection.

Just as Chambers - whose brain is known to have knowledge contaminated by Matthew's original ideas (because he cited Matthew's book in 1832) - was Wallace's greatest influence and an admitted influence on Darwin and wider society on the topic of organic evolution, he is acknowledged as a great influence on Spencer.

Spencer coined the term 'survival of the fittest' in 1864.

Spencer, H. ( 1864) The Principles of Biology, Volume 1. p. 444. London. Williams and Norgate.

Spencer's term (1864) 'survival of the fittest' is simply a re-hash of Matthew's (1831, p. 387) original phrase  'selection by the law of nature', which Darwin (1859) shortened to 'selection by nature' on page 224 of the Origin of Species. Spencers re-hash is more elegant but less precise than Matthew's (1831, p.385) original prose:

'Nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction.'

Matthew wrote further about the natural process of selection on pages 364-365 using examples of fierce strength, cunning and swiftness being present in naturally selected species:

'This law sustains the lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his wiles.'

Furthermore, Matthew (pp 307-308 wrote of the survival of 'the best circumstance suited for reproduction', which is a far more precise phrase than Spencer's, which has been wrongly taken by non-experts to imply that the most athletic survive in competition.

Moreover, Matthew uses his phrase in the context of his original Artificial versus Natural selection analogy of Differences, that Wallace used in his 1858 Ternate paper, Darwin used in his unpublished essay and then to open Chapter One of the Origin of Species (Darwin 1859).

Matthew was the first to use the powerfully simple Artificial versus Natural Selection Analogy of Differences to explain the complexity of natural selection. This is probably the most important explanatory analogy ever published in the history of humanity. Loren Eiseley (1979) had earlier discovered that Darwin's unpublished (1844) replicated Matthew's (1831) plants grown in nurseries versus those growing wild analogy of differences to explain the operation of natural selection. What none before me picked up on is that Darwin (1859) opened Chapter 1 of the Origin of Species with Matthew's unique explanatory analogy:

'When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. When we reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different climates and treatment, I think we are driven to conclude that this greater variability is simply due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the parent-species have been exposed under nature.'

Matthew (1831) had earlier written on page 308 - in the main body of his book:

Patrick Matthew: The New Data

Pay a Visit to 

Patrick Matthew.com. 

 Big Data technology enabled me to newly discover facts that 100 per cent  prove Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace fallaciously claimed that no one read Matthew's prior-published discovery and explanatory examples of natural selection before their replications of both.

This website explains the significance of the New Data about who Darwin and Wallace each knew who really did read Patrick Matthew's (1831) original and full prior published hypothesis of natural selection, and then influenced their thinking on the topic before Darwin and Wallace (1858) replicated and claimed Matthew's ideas as their own independent discovery.

  Evolutionary biologists appear to be in a classic 'state of denial' over the  facts about who Darwin and Wallace knew who did read and then cite Matthew's ideas before 1858.

 You are invited to peruse what I have written, study the New Data, and make up your own mind.

                                                          Dr Mike Sutton (2015)

A Message to Isis in Syria from beyond the grave

Dear Isis in Syria, I found a message for you. Sent from beyond the grave pic.twitter.com/M7vlTGzLr8

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) December 19, 2015

The Replicator Response Cocktail

My research is in the area of priority and multiple independent discovery is in its early stages, but so far in the case of Darwin, Wallace and Matthew and others I have found a pattern appears to be emerging.

The Cocktail of Responses from Replicators when Confronted by Originators