Starts by explaining the effect of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus held and published many of the ideas Charles later used. Relates how the attempted attack on Joseph Priestley, a family friend, for his beliefs intimidated Darwin for the remainder of his life. The mob cried out, 'No philosophers - church and king forever!'
Johnson explains that Charles Lyell the geologist had just published a book showing that the earth must be millions of years old. For persons who believed incorrectly that the Bible teaches the earth is only six thousand years old, this evidence destroyed the faith of many. Johnson notes on page 31 this information was more significant in producing disbelief than anything Darwin wrote.
After returning from the Beagle, he read Malthus. This 'had a huge emotional impact'. Malthus law that population always outstrips food,(arithmetical vs geometrical), struck Darwin as the truth, (we now know Malthus was wrong). This erroneous idea was fundamental to Darwin's future writing.
On page 72 Johnson says that Tennyson in his poem, In Memoriam of 1851, 'glorified and almost sanctified evolution'. This is before Darwin's book. The idea of evolution was already accepted by many.
Page 83 "Origin, then, was a cleverly written, superbly presented, and even a cunningly judged book, and quite apart from its veracity deserved to have an enormous impact and sell widely. But it was, and is, open to one objection. This springs from the original excitement and emotion in which Darwin conceived his theory of natural selection. . . His emotions convinced him that the horror scenario was the way nature operated, and he imparted this feeling to his book. The result, in the long term was to have malign even catastrophic consequences."
Johnson says that the emotion Darwin gives to nature using words as 'struggle', 'battle', 'race', forces', 'war', 'invasion', 'intruders of foreigners', 'attacks', 'beaten', or 'victorious', all referring to plants, insects and animals. Hence Darwin writes of the need for continual and colossal killings.
Page 90 notes that Marx was enthusiastic with Darwin and determined to use as a weapon in his ideological war. The Germans treated Darwin as a hero. In no other country did survival of the fittest catch on so fast. Page 127 "Darwin's writings led directly to the state of mind that promoted imperialism, the quest for colonies, the race for Africa. . . The leading Darwinian historian in Germany, Heinrich Von Treitschke, elaborated a fierce racial analysis of Germany's history and triumphant future, and Bismarck started a national program of German imperialism with a slogan of Darwinian resonance, "Blood and Iron."
Page 130 "The truth is, region is a book that, with total success, and embodies an exciting idea and had a devastating intellectual and emotional impact on world society." This led to social Darwinism in many forms, including laws against Jewish and Slavic immigration to protect the Anglo-Saxon racial stock.
Page 136 "It was essential to the self respect of communists to believe their ideology was scientific, and Darwin provided stiffening to the scaffold of laws and dialectic they erected there around their seizure and retention of power. . . Paul Pot, introduced by his professor John Paul Sartre to the idea of evolution to higher forms, translated that theory in terms of Cambodia into an urban rural struggle in which one fourth of the population died. In the 20th century, it is likely that over 100 million people were killed or starved to death as a result of totalitarian regimes infected with the varieties of social Darwinism."
Of course the evil effects of Darwinism does not prove it to be false. However, it should cause all thinking people to carefully examine the evidence for such a devastating doctrine. The uncritical support of such a doctrine is not a proper use of human reason. This seems to be the message of this book.
This book is 151 pages. Easy reading. Written for general reader not scholars. Johnson expresses opinion without attacking.
Good introduction to Darwin and the effects on the world of Darwinism.
For a more exhaustive account see: Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. 1959. It has 427 pages and hundreds of footnotes.
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Sofi
Just to have a light idea of who Darwin was
Reviewed in France on July 10, 2015
Creativebeing
Absolutely love it!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 9, 2014