Buckley’s Mix

Lincoln-Darwin

Posted March 22, 2009, 09:03 ET Comments Off

I have been putting together a program on Lincoln an Darwin, the hook being the fact that they were born within a few hours of each other. Happily Poe was born a few weeks before, so I didn’t have to worry about him.

Lincoln and Darwin shared several personal traits. Both were subject to bouts of depression and were possibly manic. Both came from an inferior stata of society. The Darwin family was very rich, to be sure, and Darwin did attend Cambridge, but there was nevertheless a social gulf between him and, say, Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle. Both Darwin and Lincoln were raised in a tradition of religious dissent (again, a good deal more primitive in Lincoln’s case). And both were leading nineteenth century intellectuals.

It is at the level of ideas that the similarities are most striking. Lincoln was no scientist, but he did hold a patent, and celebrated the discoveries of science and the progress of industry. Forget the log-cabin posters. If there are three words that summarize Lincoln’s views about work, they are “I hate farming.”

As for Darwin, we tend to forget that he was a strong abolitionist all his life. A grandson of Wedgewood (those “Am I not a man and a brother” plates), he married another Wedgewood, and joined the Jamaica Committee that sought to bring Gov. Eyre to justice.

Several books in recent years have looked at all this. No one should read Adam Gopnik’s shallow Angels and Ages, and David Contosta’s plodding Rebel Giants is scarcely better. However, the Desmond and Moore Darwin’s Sacred Cause is a fascinating if overstated look at the effort to combat racism from within the scientific community.

Category: scholarship
Tags:

Comments

Comments are closed.