Darwin Revelation

At the beginning of this course, my knowledge of Charles Darwin—his work, personal life, and views—was fairly minimal. I could only recall bits and pieces from my 8th grade science and 10th grade biology classes. Being largely indifferent to him (and a few science-related subjects in general), I haven’t devoted a lot of thought to something directly pertaining to Darwin until now.

I try to maintain a fairly impartial approach when it comes to his famous theory of evolution, and its ongoing argument with creationism. Like I’ve mentioned before, I believe anything is possible: because I was raised with and learned both views, I respect and see validity in both sides of the argument, finding it difficult to choose a “side.” Despite my admitted apathy towards this subject, I feel it is impossible to be objective to it, which is my “revelation” —that we cannot completely observe our own species without some sort of bias or influence from our culture/society.

Okay, but this is pretty obvious, right? How is this a “revelation?” I’ve understood for a while that the influence of one’s culture can play a role in his or her beliefs, opinions, and view of the world. I had to argue with myself the day we discussed gender (and race) in Darwin’s The Descent of Man; I saw the blatant sexist observations of a man—but a man of his time.

Being a female myself, the role of women throughout history and in context of cultures around the world has always fascinated me. I am a proud alumna of Catherine McAuley High School, a Catholic girls’ school in Portland, Maine. My senior English teacher considered a feminist by her students, though she claimed otherwise (a “womanist”). I learned a lot in my four years about the places in the world my gender has been, and where I/we can now go, and how far we’ve come.

Here are some of the claims and observations Charles Darwin makes in his work, The Descent of Man: “Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition…of a past and lower state of civilization” (Darwin, 234), “Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman…therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained the power of selection” (242), and finally, “Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether or not proportionately to his larger body, has not, I believe, been fully ascertained” (233). Now, from reading those statements, one would conclude that he was sexist. However, science historian Evelleen Richards argues, “To label him as a sexist may be technically correct…but it is mere rhetoric in the context of a society in which almost everyone was a sexist—who held discriminatory views of woman’s nature and social rôle” (443).

I certainly agree with what she’s saying, which is my “revelation,” but I was still finding myself at another point. Being the progressive thinker Darwin was, shouldn’t he have seen that within his society women were not allowed to become “powerful in body and mind?” Men are typically built bigger than women, so I will cut a little slack for the “powerful in body” aspect. But the mind? Female authors had to be published under male pseudonyms to even be considered! Women couldn’t really train to become doctors or scientists until around his time, so how could they prove that they were just as powerful in mind as men? I guess I just can’t completely, 100% agree that he wasn’t a little bit sexist.

This just proves that Darwin can’t be taken as an objective source to our species. Well, duh! Of course, he’s human too. So when I say my revelation is “that we cannot completely observe our own species without some sort of bias or influence from our culture/society,” I mean I didn’t understand it completely until I got to know Darwin’s work a little better; I didn’t realize how much of an effect an outside source can have on even scientific observations. I would like to think we are as close to being objective as we can today, but who knows? Maybe one hundred years from now, another college student will be writing about the same thing…

Darwin, Charles. “Selections from Darwin’s Work.” pp 67-254 in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed . New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Richards, Evelleen. “Darwin and the Descent of Women.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed . New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.