Charles Darwin (1871) The Descent of Man, 1st edition, pages 168 -169:
The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
This is why I never cared for the hypotheses Darwin laid out. If you actually read it, it is pretty obnoxious stuff. I wonder why they teach it in schools.
2 comments:
Sorry, I have to jump in here ... normally I'm reluctant to comment, especially when something appears to be politically charged, but I think it's important to keep a few things in mind. This passage (and a number of others from The Descent of Man) is often used by creationists to attack evolutionary theory. I won't mount a full-scale defense of Darwin here, but I can tell you that the inferred bigotry in this passage is understandable, but in truth Darwin was much more progressive than the majority of his scientific peers. In fact, at the time, polygenism was broadly supported in the scientific community, while Darwin was staunchly monogenist and frequently went against conventional wisdom by asserting that all humans were genetically the same species. If anything, his views were very progressive for the era and much closer to our own. This passage, by the way, is not about racial inferiority (although I can see why it would set off alarm bells today), it is about the growing gap between humans of all kinds and their nearest non-human relatives.
When you ask why they teach "it" in schools, I assume you mean Darwinian thought on natural selection. The reason why they teach Darwin is pretty obvious: Natural selection is not just a popular hypothesis, it's accepted as truth by the entire scientific community. There are disagreements on some elements of evolutionary theory, but literally no scientist has suggested that natural selection is unsupported. And Darwin's work is historically a game-changing moment for science and our understanding of the natural world, so yes, it should be taught. One additional note: You're citing "The Decent of Man," which is not the source of most classroom lessons on Darwin; that would be "On the Origin of Species," which was published over a decade earlier and did not address any of the potentially offending language above.
By the way, even if he had been obtusely bigoted, his scientific writing shouldn't be purged from classrooms. There are plenty of slave-owning (and likely horribly racist) Founding Fathers in American history, and we trust students to separate their great thoughts from their despicable observations on race. This is not a new issue.
I disagree.
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