Posted
on February 24, 2015
When
asked, “What book did Charles Darwin write?” most people who
answered at all would say, “On the Origin of Species.”
That was his first book about evolutionary theory, and it made the
biggest splash in terms of controversy from scientists and the
general public alike.
But
although that first book implied that, if modern animals had evolved
from simpler forms, humans, too, had evolved from "lower" animals—Darwin
had been careful not to explore that concept in Origin. He let it just hang there,
in the air: it was implied, not clearly stated.
Actually, Darwin
had so little wanted to provoke controversy, he had sat on his
unpublished evolutionary theory for 20 years! But in 1859, Origin was
published, the word was out, and the firestorm of response began.
Flash
forward to this date in 1871. In the 11 years since Origin,
plenty of people had discussed and debated and written and published
ideas about the evolution of human beings, but now Darwin weighed in
on the topic with his book The Descent of Man. Finally Darwin was ready to state that humans, too, had evolved. People had common ancestors with other animals and even plants and mushrooms and protists!(Remember, Darwin was not the first to claim that humans evolved. But his account of how evolutionary theory applied to humans was an important step in the field.)
A
lot of people have made claims about the book The Descent of Man: Darwin was racist,
they say, or Darwin wanted to kill off “weaker” humans in favor
of the strong. Eugenics—the idea of making the human race better by
making the genetic pool better, taller, smarter, stronger, more
beautiful, by controlling breeding—is supposed to have gotten its
start with Darwin's book.
It
is clear that Darwin was a bit racist by today's standards. However,
for an Englishman of his own time—a time when many argued that
different races were actually different species—Darwin was notable
for how minor he thought racial differences were. His book argued, with evidence, that all humans were the same species and shared common ancestors, and pointed out the similarities between all peoples. Also, Darwin was an
abolitionist. He first saw slavery in Brazil, while on his famous
voyage on the Beagle, and it had horrified him. He thought
that “the race question” was one of the most important of his
time.
 |
| Before Darwin (and unfortunately, in some cases, even after Darwin), some people would have answered this plea, "No, you're not a man and a brother." |
It is also clear that Darwin seemed to think that it was inevitable that less technological
people would either die off or be absorbed by what he called
“civilised races.” However, he actually argued that people should
NOT try to weed out the “weak” but instead should help the weak
and the ill.
Darwin's work and book promoted our modern view: that all humans are the same species; that all people came from “savage” origins; that cultural differences swamp any minor physical differences among peoples.
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