Darwin's Notebooks

 

Darwin performed the largest single piece of scientific work ever conducted, and he was certainly aware of the Pandora's box that he had opened. It is well known that he and his devoted wife, Emma, could not agree about some of the questions that acutely concerned him. Even before they were married they had reached an implicit agreement that they would not pursue them in discussion together, although she always hoped that he would eventually 'see the light', and she supported him in every other way. She was a highly cultivated lady who had taken piano lessons from Chopin and spoke several languages well. Charles took her to church every Sunday and left her at the door. The Darwin household did seem to be remarkably harmonious for all that; down to the most junior member of the staff. It was a model in every way. There were some remarkable personalities amongst his children and several eventually had very distinguished careers.

 

Reflections

 

Darwin's thoughts about some of the most sensitive issues concerning human behaviour were recorded in special notebooks that he kept locked away, and on which he had written 'Private'. These personal jottings have been transcribed and collated in Charles Darwin's Notebooks (Cambridge 1987), and a selection of the notes he made show just how aware he was of the implications of natural selection for humanity generally. They make fascinating reading. It comes as a surprise to many to see how interested he was in artistic questions. Some of them are more enigmatic than others, but all confirm his curiosity, as a brief selection from them shows.

 

 Music and poetry - opposite ends of one scale

 

The similarity of men's reasons; shown by similarity of earliest art

 

Is our idea of beauty, that which we have been most generally accustomed to - analogous to my idea of conscience

 

My handwriting is the same as Grandfather's

 

He who would understand baboons would do more for metaphysics than Mr Locke

 

Why does person cry for joy?

 

The possibility of the brain having whole trains of thoughts, feelings and perceptions separate from the ordinary state of mind

 

The beauties developed in a work of art are not approved of by the eye itself, but by the imagination through the medium of the eye

 

The object of all art is the recycling and embodying what never existed but in the imagination

 

How strange it is that Nature should have so little to do with Art

 

Children can understand before they can talk, and so do animals

 

 He observed his children closely as they developed, and he even tried to discover if  animals were sensitive to music. In his notebooks he has reflected on the fact that language distinguishes the human race but also that animals do communicate in a simpler fashion, and that very young children recognise sounds and facial expressions, just as birds, say, recognise predators. He published a book, towards the end of his life, which has been subsequently rather neglected ; The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, which took about 150 years to reach even a second edition. It was one of the first books to use photographs and illustrated the ways in which we express emotion, as a race. It was the result of much correspondence between himself and many friends around the world.

 

 The Universality of Language and Emotion

 

 He proposed that emotional expression was a common universal instinct, This fact  was still being disputed well into the 20th century even by such esteemed anthropologists as Margaret Mead, although eventually it came to be accepted. It was a conclusion that was to be reflected much later in the work of Chomsky on the similar universality of language. John Searle, has more recently placed new interpretation on this universality by saying broadly that human brains cause minds, and minds bring semantics to language as opposed to simply structure. Darwin's own life was not long enough for him to bring all that he had set moving to fruition, and that is highlighted by just how many have applied themselves to his ideas since he died, and are still doing so, as shown by the prolific literature that has appeared recently 

 

 © Frank Evans 2009