Reading This Week

[wolffyluna]

On The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

I continue my project of borrowing audio versions of classic books I 'should' read from the library and listening to them at work.

I overall enjoyed this, but I am a biology nerd.

Some scattered thoughts:

• Wow, scientific publishing has really changed over the years. He calls this novel length thing an 'abstract' (!) and claims he didn't have time to include citations so he just didn't (!!!)
• man, the levels of scientific racism in this are both completely expected and deeply unpleasant. And-- okay, so there's a way he talks about the introduction of European animals being introduced to Australia/New Zealand/South America, with a certain air of how it's only natural that the superior European animals have outcompeted them. And I'm not claiming that Darwin is being racist towards the animals-- they're animals, you can't be racist towards them? But the way he talks about animals in other ways rhymes uncomfortably with the way he talks about the Indigenous groups and, yeah. There sure is a vibe of "naturally superior European animals, plants and people, who will natural outcompete, etc" which is. not great.
• Darwin is a really good persuasive writer. He's very good at carefully going through the objections to his theory of natural selection, and puncturing them one by one.
• I love all the weird experiments he did to try and work out things like 'how could animals spread across the ocean?' where he puts like, eggs in sea water and then feeds them to fish which he then feeds to a pelican, etc. It's some real boots on ground Victorian experimentalism. You love to see it.
• His conclusion gave me emotions. And, look, I'm a known sap for that certain brand of scientific awe-- think Brian Cox documentaries, etc. But. Man.

Here's a quote:

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the “plan of creation,” “unity of design,” etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

And! Darwin! You can look with confidence to the future, Darwin! You won! The 'young naturalists' did help! They found DNA and continental drift and*Pre Cambrian soft bodied fossils* and are just waiting on the invention of a time machine to show you the super cool phylogenetic trees they've been making.

[sobs] There are 'endless forms most beautiful'! There is 'grandeur in this view of life'!

The Women of the Magna Carta by Sharon Bennett Connolly

I occaisionally had moments, when people made tumblr posts about how Medieval fantasy didn't really get the Medieval, and I pined because I had no clue how to find stuff out about what they were talking about.

And look. I do not claim to be an expert on the Medieval period after one book. But, the stuff about hostage taking and arranged marriages, specifically? I think I get it now.

The book is just. A whole string of people getting married off at weird ages, getting widowed and remarried and joining convents and getting kidnapped or getting their husbands kidnapped. People try and piece together whether spouses got along based on whether they put out charters under both of their names. Dower lands are constantly getting transferred, but I'm still slightly confused what they are. You have to pay a fine if you marry your kids without the king's permission, but this seems to be treated as more of a tax? We're having to work out people's birthdates based on when they get married. People keep becoming childless widows at 17. It's just. So much.

(One of the provisions in the Magna Carta makes it so you can't force a widow to remarry, if she wants to remain a childless widow throughout her life. Which some of these childless teenage widows took advantage of!)

But one thing that's sticking with me-- is it's given me another excuse for 'why would you have arranged gay marriages in a pseudo medieval setting?' So, I would have to double check who exactly this happened to, but there was a guy who ended up getting married to a fifty year old widow when he was twenty. And like. Everyone involved knew he was not getting an heir that way? But he needed access to land (via his wife) more urgently, and there's some stuff that makes it look like the king was blackmailing him about marrying this woman? Both some 'marry her or else, I know you need the land' with a side of 'and oh nooo... if you don't have children... however shall I, the king, cope...."

So. Hey. One could write a gay arranged marriage in a pseudo medieval setting happening out of land rights shenanigans and the king trying to blackmail someone out of having an heir?

(Unfortunately through a quick skim of the book again I cannot find it, and all I have is "i think the woman was called either Isabelle or Eleanor, and the man may have been named Simon?") (Everyone in that century was named Isabel, Eleanor, Simon or William. People kept passing their names down to their children or divorcing annulling their marriage to one Isabel to marry another.)

Comments

[tavina]

Origin of Species was definitely a fun read! And it's so nostalgic to me looking back (though yeah, some of it has. not aged well shall we say.) because it's the book that inspired me to get into genetics and then evodevo and now I'm making gene trees and stuff! I'd like to think that he would like this.

[wolffyluna]

Oh, wow, that's so cool! I definitely think he would like that.

[zdenka]

Aw, I like that quotation from Darwin! That is touching.

Ooh, cool weird medieval shenanigans . . .

[queenlua]

awww man now i have Emotions too.

there was a cool class in undergrad that i never had a chance to take, but was jointly taught between the biology & literature departments—the idea was you'd read On the Origin of Species plus some other old-timey literature and study it both as a scientific document AND as a piece of literature. because it really is! darwin's got a way with words!!!

possibly relevant to your interests: i enjoyed the book Good Enough a while back, which is a science book with a thesis of its own but deals quite a bit with Darwin's original text, the context of his time, etc... lots of fun anecdotes in there