Creation: Darwin, His Daughter & Human Evolution

The new film, "Creation," is based on the original version of this book, "Darwin, His Daughter & Human Evolution," first published in 2002. I found the movie to be quite well done, but it is hard to encapsulate the many dimensions of Darwin (including his family relationships) in the running time of a film. This book, written by a grandson (5 times over I think) has many virtues. For the first several hundred pages, it presents a wonderful portrait of an upper class Victorian family as it lived and its head conducted his scientific research. The Victorians never cease to amaze me with the richness of their activities and attitudes, and this is certainly well illustrated in this book. We follow Darwin from just after his Beagle return through his marriage, the birth of his children, the emotional stress he and his wife experienced due to her perception that his work would destroy her dream of reuniting with family after death, his continuing illnesses, and his extensive scientific research and activities. One big question about Darwin has always been why it took him so long to publish his "Origin" after his return (more than 20 years). A central focus of a both book and movie is his relationship with his first daughter, Anne, and the effect her death at age 10 had on getting Darwin to move toward publication of his findings. It is clear that her death did cause Darwin to spend time thinking about pain and death in the world, and how this suggested to him the absence of a divine figure guiding all earthly developments--hence opening the way for evolution to step in. And it is another of the contributions of the book that we see the Victorians intertwined with death--an activity they took very seriously and implemented their grief quite extensively. So Darwin is beginning to get going when he receives the famous letter from Alfred Russel Wallace announcing his own discovery of the evolutionary principles. Darwin then is forced into intense activity resulting in the publication (finally) of the "Origin" in 1859. Had Anne lived, I am sure the result would have been the same, so I am not persuaded that her death (and its enormous impact on Darwin) was the catalytic element that sparked him into action. But in arguing his thesis, the author just does a fantastic job of telling us all sorts of interesting and important things about Darwin as he worked and wrote during this sad period. The book continues on until the death of Darwin and much later that of his wife. We see that Victorian families could expect to lose several children to diseases, and Darwin's loss of three children out of eight was not extraordinary, just very sad. We learn a bit about the surviving Darwin children, especially Henfrietta who grew to become a helpful assistant to her father. All told, we learn a great deal from this splendidly researched book, particularly the human dimenson of Darwin and what kind of man he was. There are helpful page-by-page notes and some

a sad and beautiful book about the great man, written by a greatx5 grandson. the daily life of a gentleman, dissecting barnacles in his study, playing with his children and living with the vissisitudes of his chronic health disorder. among many details : i knew that he was not present when his paper on natural selection was presented for the first time in london, but i did not appreciate he was attending the funeral of one of his children at the time.

If you're curious about Charles Darwin, the man, look no further than Randal Keynes' touching biography of his great-great-uncle. It's all here: from the Darwin's marriage and first home in London to the details of life at Downe House, Emma's widowhood, and Annie's Box. The account spans from the time Darwin decided to "Marry - Marry - Marry. Q.E.D." in 1938, dipping into some history at Cambridge and aboard the Beagle, until Emma's death in 1896, and includes a deeply personal look at life along the way. Keynes pays particular attention to Darwin as husband and father. Darwin, who adored his family, exhibited "a fine degree of paternal fervour" with his ten children, playing on his hands and knees with them, never silencing their "howls and screams," and even allowing them into his study while he worked. Of all the children, Darwin doted most on Annie, his cherished, eldest daughter, who was the apple of her devoted father's eye. On April 22, 1851, just two days after Easter, Annie died, possibly from tuberculosis. Paradoxically, Darwin's religiosity suffered its final blow at this holiest time of year for Christians. Separated from his wife during Annie's demise, Darwin could not draw on Emma's religious fortitude to comfort him or to interpret Annie's death, and he could not find the consolation he needed from the Church. Although Darwin's theory of evolution was already well developed by the time Annie died, Keynes juxtaposes Darwin's darkening sense of nature (and his efforts to understand suffering and death) with his continued work on the Origin of Species. Keynes' ultimate thesis is that Darwin's private "life and his science were all of a piece," which he aptly portrays. The narrative left me with a greater appreciation of an iconic, and often misunderstood, man, someone who was both a brilliant scientist and a loving human being who made time in life for the things that matter most: family and friends. Roxanne Enman

Charles Darwin has been much vilified by creationists for the development of his "atheistic" theory of evolution by natural selection. This book portrays the true Charles Darwin as a grieving and loving father and husband, a very human and humane doubter in revealed religion, and a serious and thoughtful scientist. That people can have honest differences with a popular view of religion without having horns and a pointed tail may open the minds of some. It will, unfortunately, probably not convince those who refuse to entertain the possibility that non-believers can be moral beings.Keynes has done us a great service by revealing the private sorrows and triumphs of his famous ancestor and their effects of his thinking. Unlike many other great men (like Isaac Newton, for example), Charles Darwin seems to be someone you might have wanted to have as a neighbor and friend.I recommend this book without reservation to those who would like to know more about the man who revolutionize our thinking regarding man's place in nature.

There are a good many biographies of Charles Darwin. This is as it should be, given that his theory of evolution is the overarching explanatory force in biology. Darwin was a keen observer, a model scientist, and a modest, approachable man. Though the creationists then and now criticize evolution for religious reasons, they have only been able to criticize his life by deceit: Darwin was upright, fair, and generous. He was also an exemplary family man as both husband and father. It is this last aspect of Darwin's life that is admirably covered in _Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution_ (Riverhead Books) by Randal Keynes. There is ample reason for this one more book on evolution's founder: Keynes's grandmother was Darwin's granddaughter, and Keynes had access to family accounts of growing up in the Darwin household. Seven of Darwin's ten children survived to adulthood, and five of these wrote about their upbringings, and upon these accounts, Keynes has drawn heavily, to provide an intimate picture of life in Down House, and to show how family relationships provided material for Darwin's thought.At the heart of the story is Annie Darwin, who died in 1851 at the age of ten, after a lingering, mysterious illness. The parents, Charles and Emma, were devastated by the loss of a daughter who seems to have been a particular font of joy for them. Darwin in his grief sat down to write. He first produced a moving memorial to Annie, reproduced here with its words of quiet and profound grief. And then, as he always did when he was emotionally drained, he went to work, at this time on his great species theory. The sadness over Annie's death pervaded all Darwin's subsequent thinking, but Keynes's book is not a sad one. Of course Darwin had a triumphant life, but daily life in his household was generally joyous, and the children knew it, and gratefully acknowledged it as such in later years. The children were raised in happy indulgence. They learned to read when they chose to do so, and they collected specimens and made notes as their father did. They learned to think for themselves. They often made a chaos of the house, invading Darwin's writing room, but were rarely expelled even from that sanctum. Darwin never dropped his role as investigator, and made notes on the children's development, ideas that were incorporated into his theory.Keynes has reviewed Darwin's upbringing, education, travels, and writings, but this book will not replace any of the fine biographies we now have. Instead, it gives details about an important spark to Darwin's thinking. The details about the life within Down House are often linked with Darwin's writing, but more importantly, the archetypal great scientist is poignantly shown as a deeply human, admirable, and quite lovable, family man.