8/9/2019 100315.Dundee Courier.darwin in Edinburgh.extract

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Biographers regularly go back toDarwins Edinburgh years,

convinced the seeds of all his laterthinking lie thereand to a large

degree they are right.

THESE WORDS were written byHarvard professor JanetBrowne, whose two-volume

biography is considered thedefinitive work on Charles Darwin.

Despite this, no one had writtena full account of Darwins time inScotland, of the people he metthere who influenced his thinkingand set him on the course that ledhim to deliver his theory ofevolution.

Edinburgh University scientistJulian Derrywriting as J. F.Derryhas spent the last sevenyears forensically going over everyrecord of the two years Darwinspent in Edinburgh as a young man.Now his book Darwin In Scotland is

released later this month.An encompassing look at the

time spent here by the father ofevolution, it features interviews withGod Delusion author RichardDawkins, linguist and philosopherNoam Chomsky, Astronomer RoyalMartin Rees and Darwins great-great-grandson Randal Keynesamong others.

Inspiration for the book camewhen Julian was enjoying a beerwith George Schaller, the worldsforemost field biologist, while the

two men were in Ulan Batorstudying the Mongolian gazelle.

We were talking about Darwinand all the people who hadinfluenced him, he recalls. Most ofthem can be traced to his time inEdinburgh and it suddenly becameobvious to me that Darwin hadgained so much from his time here,even though it had been sofleeting.

Julian (42) was born near Londonand grew up in the Midlands. Afterstudying in Bangor and York hecontinued his studies at EdinburghUniversity, where he remains asvisiting scientist at the Institute ofEvolutionary Biology.

My PhD was in Africanevolutionary biology, and I spent the

best part of a decade thereinSouth Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana,Namibia, Kenya and Tanzania, hesays.

In 2008, he published researchthat led to suggestions climatechange could spark an explosion ofnew species in Africa.

If you look at previousperiods of climate change,you might have grazing

animals such as wildebeestwhich need to stay close towater. If they migratebetween three water holes,for example, and the middleone dries out, herds ofanimals at the other two canbe cut off from each other.

Over time the two groupswill breed among themselvesand their gene pool changes.They develop into distinctlydifferent species, so if theclimate changes again andthe water hole came back,the two herds would nolonger be able to breed witheach other.

This researchalong withthat of thousands of otherscientists across the worldwouldnt be possible were itnot for the work of CharlesDarwin.

Last year marked the200th anniversary of Darwinsbirth, as well as the 150thanniversary of thepublication of his seminal workOn The Origin Of Species.

Despite the worldwideresurgence of interest in Darwinthese milestones sparked, Julianfelt not enough was made of thescientists Scottish connection, andhis work aims to redress that.

Charles Darwin came toEdinburgh towards the end of1825 and left in 1827. He was senthere because he wasnt doing wellat school in Shrewsbury, Julianexplains.

He came up with his brotherErasmus to do medicine. His fatherRobert Darwin was furious with himfor going off shooting and fishinginstead of working to become anintellectual like the rest of thefamily.

The decision to send youngCharles Darwin to Scotland set himon a path that would open anentirely new branch of science andrefute a literal interpretation of theBible.

Darwin may not have been inEdinburgh for long but the

experience influenced his thinkingever after, Julian continues. Youhave to understand that Scotlandseducation was world-class whenDarwin came here.

Im not quite sure whatshappened since then, he adds, in areference to recent news that13,000 children in Scotland leaveschool every year unable to read orwrite properly.

At that time our influencecame from France. It was the age ofEnlightenment in Europe and that

spawned the ScottishEnlightenment. David Hume wasone of the most prominent figures inthat.

Darwin was also only a fewdecades after another Edinburgh

scientist, the geologist JamesHutton, came up with the conceptof deep time. Until then everyonebelieved in a literal interpretation ofthe Biblethat the Earth was4000-6000 years oldbut Huttondeduced from rock formations atplaces including Arthurs Seat andSiccar Point that it was much older.

At first the thinking washundreds of thousands ofyears, then millions, and ofcourse we now reckon theage of the Earth in billions.

Edinburghs medicalschool was second tonone. The Burke and Harescandal didnt happen foranother 10 years or so,though people Darwin wasengaging with ended upcaught up in it.

So Darwin arrived inScotland during an age ofscientific inquiry, which

was coupled with aVictorian urge to explainand investigateeverything.

Although Darwin nevertook much part in formaltuition, through interactionwith his peers, tutors andextra-curricular groups, hewas exposed to a type ofphilosophy rooted in theScottish Enlightenment.

If he had gone toCambridge his education would

have been theologically based andunlikely to have given him theperspective to challenge theprevailing doctrine, Julian reckons.

He didnt study much though.He couldnt deal with surgeryperformed without anaesthesia.Theres an account of himwitnessing surgery on a child,whose awful screams stayed withhim for the rest of his life.

Darwin more or less dropped outof medicine, but he had becomeinterested by his course on naturalsciences. He also learned taxidermyfrom a freed Guinean slave calledJohn Edmonstone, who he spent alot of time with in Edinburgh, andthat skill was brought to bear duringhis voyage on the Beagle.

He assisted Edinburgh Universitybiologist Robert Edmund Grantsinvestigations into the life cycle ofmarine invertebrates in the Firth ofForth.

The two of them would go forlong walks along the shoreline atPrestonpans and Portobello talkingabout the natural world, Juliancontinues. Darwin also deliveredhis first scientific paper inEdinburgh.

As well as documenting theinfluence of Scotland on Darwin,Julian also examines the influenceof Darwin on todays scholars atEdinburgh University, and on themany of todays most eminentthinkerspeople like Dawkins,Chomsky and Rees.

He also spoke to creationistswho refute evolution, preferring tothink the world was created in sixdays around 4000 years ago andthat man walked alongside

dinosaurs.One of these was Ken Ham, theAustralian-born president ofAnswers in Genesis USAone of the largest young-earthorganisations.

The last three chapters of thebook are about creationism, whichhas been dressed up as intelligentdesign in a bid to make it soundmore scientific, Julian says.

Darwin never really challengedGod or religion. Rather, hechallenged the natural theology that

God placed everything here, fullyformed.

One of the most obvious,yet overlooked, contributions whichEdinburgh made to Darwin is in thenaming of his world-changing book.

One of the courses he tookunder Robert Jameson atEdinburgh University was calledOrigin of the Species of Animals.Thirty years later, when he sat downto think of the title of his book, whoknows what went through hismind.

Darwin In Scotland: Edinburgh,Evolution And Enlightenment, byJ. F. Derry, goes on sale at theend of this month, published byWhittles Publishing. ISBN978-1904445-57-9.

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