Now Darwin introduces a better-known forerunner, the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. This book was published anonymously in 1844 by Robert Chambers; it is clear that he was also its author. The medical schools of Edinburgh were awash with the realisation that entirely different animals have remarkably similar anatomies, suggesting a common origin and therefore the mutability of species. For example, the same basic arrangement of bones occurs in the human hand, the paw of a dog, the wing of a bird, and the fin of a whale. If each were a separate creation, God must have been running out of ideas.
Chambers was a socialite - he played golf - and he decided to make the scientific vision of life on Earth available to the common man. A born journalist, Chambers outlined not just the history of life, but that of the entire cosmos. And he filled the book with sly digs at `those dogs of the clergy'. The book was an overnight sensation, and each successive edition slowly removed various blunders that had made the first edition easy to attack on scientific grounds. The vilified clergy thanked their God that the author had not begun with one of the later editions.
Darwin, who respected the Church, had to refer to Vestiges, but he also had to distance himself from it. In any case, he found it woefully incomplete. In his `Historical Sketch', Darwin quoted from the tenth `and much improved' edition, objecting that the anonymous author of Vestiges cannot account for the way organisms are adapted to their environments or lifestyles. He takes up the same point in his introduction, suggesting that the anonymous author would presumably say that: After a certain number of unknown generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the misseltoe {sic}, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained.
More heavyweights follow, interspersed with lesser figures. The first heavyweight is Richard Owen, who was convinced that species could change, adding that to a zoologist the word `creation' means `a process he knows not what'. The next is Wallace. Darwin reviews his interactions with both, at some length. He also mentions Herbert Spencer, who considered the breeding of domesticated varieties of animals as evidence that species could change in the wild, without human intervention. Spencer later became a major populariser of Darwin's theories. He introduced the memorable phrase `survival of the fittest', which unfortunately has caused more harm than good to the Darwinian cause, by promoting a rather simple-minded version of the theory.
An unexpected name is that of the Reverend Baden Powell, whose 1855 `Essays on the Unity of Worlds' states that the introduction of new species is a natural process, not a miracle. Credit for mutability of species is also given to Karl Ernst von Baer, Huxley, and Hooker.
Darwin was determined not to miss out anyone with a legitimate claim, and in all he lists more than twenty people who in various ways anticipated parts of this theory. He is absolutely explicit that he is not claiming credit for the idea that species can change, which was common currency in scientific circles - and, as Baden Powell shows, beyond. What Darwin is laying claim to is not the idea of evolution, but that of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism.
So ... we come full circle. Does an innovative idea change the world, or does a changing world generate the idea?
Yes.
It's complicity. Both of these things happen - not once, but over and over again, each progressively altering the other. Innovations redirect the course of human civilisation. New social directions encourage further innovation. The world of human ideas, and the world of things, recursively modify each other.
That is what happens to a planet when a species evolves that is not merely intelligent, but what we like to call extelligent. One that can store its cultural capital outside individual minds. Which lets that capital grow virtually without limit, and be accessible to almost anybody in any succeeding generation.
Extelligent species take new ideas and run with them. Before the ink was dry on Origin, biologists and laymen were already trying to test its ideas, shoot them down, push them further. If Darwin had written Ology, and if nobody else had written something like Origin, then Victorian extelligence would have been enfeebled, and perhaps the modern world would have taken longer to arrive.
But it was evolution time. Somebody would have written such a book, and soon. And in that alternat(iv)e world of if, he or she would have got the credit instead.
So it's only fair to give Darwin the credit in this world. Steam engine time notwithstanding.
LIES TO DARWIN
ARCHCHANCELLOR RIDCULLY'S MOUTH DROPPED OPEN.
`You mean killed?' he said.
+++ No +++, Hex wrote, +++ I mean vanished. Darwin disappears from Roundworld in 1850. This is a new development. That is to say, it has always happened, but has always happened only for the last two minutes +++
`I really hate time travel,' sighed the Dean.
`Kidnapped?' said Ponder, hurrying across the hall.
+++ Unknown. Phase space currently contains proto-histories in which he reappears after a fraction of one second and others where he never reappears at all. Clarity must be restored to this new node +++
`And you only tell us this now?' said the Dean.
+++ It has only just happened +++
`But,' the Dean attempted, `when you looked at this ... history before, this wasn't happening!'
+++ Correct. But that was then then, this is then now. Something has been changed. I surmise that this is as a result of our activities. And, having happened, it has always happened, from the point of view of an observer in Roundworld +++
`It's like a play, Dean,' said Ponder Stibbons. `The characters just see the act they're in. They don't see the scenery being shifted because that's not part of the play.'
+++ Despite being wrong in every important respect, that is a very good analogy +++ Hex wrote.
`Have you any idea where he is?' said Ridcully. +++ No +++
`Well, don't just sit there, man, find him!' Rincewind reappeared above the lawn, and rolled expertly when he hit the ground. Other wizards, nothing like so experienced at dealing with the vicissitudes of the world, lay about groaning or staggered around uncertainly.
`It wears off,' he said, as he stepped over them. `You might throw up a bit at first. Other symptoms of rapid cross-dimensional travel are short-term memory loss, ringing in the ears, constipation, diarrhoea, hot flushes, confusion, bewilderment, a morbid dread of feet, disorientation, nose bleeds, ear twinges, grumbling of the spleen, widgeons, and short-term memory loss.'
`I think I'd like to ... thing ... end of your life thing ... ' murmured a young wizard, crawling across the damp grass. Nearby, another wizard had pulled off his boots and was screaming at his toes.
Rincewind sighed and made a grab at an elderly wizard, who was staring around like a lost lamb. He was also soaking wet, having apparently also landed in the fountain.
He looked familiar. It was impossible to know all the wizards in UU, of course, but this one he had definitely seen before.
`Are you the Chair of Oblique Frogs?' he said.
The man blinked at him. `I ... don't know,' he said. `Am I?'
`Or the Professor of Revolvings?' said Rincewind. `I used to write down my name on a piece of paper before this sort of thing. That's always a help. You look a bit like the Professor of Revolvings.'
`Do I?' said the man.
This looked like a very bad case. `Let's find you your pointy hat and some cocoa, shall we? You'll soon feel-'