This issue is explored in the introduction to the relevant section of Darwin's correspondence. Darwin lied about the timing of when Wallace's package arrived and stole some of his ideas.īrief response: No he didn't. This myth is the result of a mix-up in letters assigned to Marx and his common-law son-in-law Aveling. Marx offered to dedicate Das Capital to Darwin.īrief response: No he didn't.

Plus there is little or no evidence for this myth from anything Darwin or his contemporaries wrote. He was busy working on lots of other projects. Darwin delayed publication of his work on evolution fearful of its consequences for religion and the reception it would receive.īrief response: He didn't delay. Darwin describes his own loss of faith in his Autobiography and brings in plenty of other good reasons that explain his loss of faith that have nothing to do with Annie's death.

It is a hypothesis formulated by Darwin biographer Jim Moore. Darwin certainly never said anything about it. Darwin lost his Christian faith because of the death of his daughter Annie.īrief response: There is no direct documentary evidence for this in anything Darwin or his contemporaries wrote.

But please don't just parrot biographers and other self-styled authorities: challenge the assignments only if you are prepared to quote the primary literature-there is no excuse not to, now with Darwin Online and The Darwin Correspondence Project available online and freely searchable. To liven things up for the Year of Darwin, here is my choice of ten myths about Darwin and his life and times! I do not have time and space in this one post to elaborate the history of all the myths here nor the reasons why they count as myths rather than reality (some are discussed in the book), but I will set my self the challenge of exploring one myth in detail each month for the ten months (Feb-Nov) that span the two Darwin anniversaries this year.įeel free to suggest your own myths in the comments section or challenge my assignments. But worse still, there are plenty of myths among the dozen things that everyone 'knows' about Darwin that have no substance in fact or which can neither be falsified nor verified. And despite what Claire claims in the TV series Heroes, Darwin never said 'It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change'-that quote originates from Clarence Darrow!. There are many suppositions masquerading as facts- for example, how many times have you seen it written that Darwin suffered from Chagas disease or his daughter Annie died from tuberculosis, when there is no way anyone can make a definitive diagnosis in either case. One of the things I discovered while writing The Rough Guide to Evolution was how much that I thought I knew about Darwin and his theory of evolution turned out to be wrong.

Darwin project wrong monitor