Charles Darwin – Some Scottish Connections

Darwin did not burst, perfectly formed, from the brow of some goddess. Indeed, if we are to believe Stephen Baxter, Darwin was well into adulthood before he could see clearly. In Revolutions in the Earth (2003) Baxter wrote: ‘In the nineteenth century even Charles Darwin would graduate from Cambridge University believing that the world was six thousand years old, give or take.’ Can we believe this? And if we do, how could Darwin have come through two years of the Edinburgh system of his time - still ‘a hotbed of genius’ - untouched by the currents of thought around him? The concept of ‘deep time’ was necessary for evolution and natural selection to work; when did Darwin acquire it? And why did he feel it necessary to conceal its acceptance? Walter Stephen examines the conflicting evidence from Darwin’s student days, and from the Beagle voyage, to reveal a complicated mixture of diffidence, ambiguity and reluctance to offend.