Benjamin Farrington (1891–1974)

Without evolution, biology would be little more than a collection of quirky facts about obscure and unrelated organisms. While Charles Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution, he conceived of the mechanism by which it occurred (natural selection), and amassed mountains of evidence for evolution in general. Widely recognized as one of the foremost scientists of all time, Darwin has been the subject of countless biographies and histories of science. Sizeable libraries could be (and are) filled with copious analyses of his scientific thought and work.

In this small book from 1966, Benjamin Farrington proposes to inform the reader about what Darwin "really said". Unfortunately, this little book has far too little Darwin and far too much Farrington, and is fatally flawed by the author's own ignorance and antipathy towards his subject.

For a scholar who aspires to analyze Darwin's writings and their impact, two qualifications are minimal -- a familiarity with biology, and a background in the history of 19th century science. As a classicist of ancient Greece, Farrington was woefully unqualified to tackle a book on this complex subject, and his inadequacies are painfully evident. For example, he informs the reader that a planaria is "a little slug-like creature" (planaria are flatworms, and slugs are molluscs -- these are altogether different phyla). Likewise, he asserts that William Paley wrote his 1802 Natural Theology to refute Lamarck's evolutionary theories -- an interesting trick, since Lamarck had not yet published his evolutionary ideas!

But where Farrington's ignorance and arrogance show most markedly are in his assessments of the significance of Darwin's ideas, the quality of his intellect, and his abilities as a scientist. In the introduction (p. 5) Farrington asserts that Darwin's ideas are "irredeemably out-of-date" -- this will come as very surprising news to professional evolutionary biologists, who routinely go back to Darwin's writings for insights into evolutionary questions. We are informed, without a shred of supportive evidence, that Charles' father Robert "had no high respect for his son's intelligence" (p. 9). Farrington asserts that for Darwin to trace the history of evolutionary ideas was "outside the range of his mental powers" (p. 61) -- a claim refuted by the fact that Darwin did just that in his famous "Historical Sketch" in the final editions of Origin of Species, and by his frequent references to the historical literature in his many other writings. We are informed, once again without evidence, that Darwin could not grasp the distinction between instinctive and learned attributes (p. 72) or between "the brain and the mind" (p. 82), and that Darwin was blind to the "distinction between the biological and the social worlds" (p. 107). Farrington proclaims that Darwin's "lack of historical sense, deriving from a general lack of culture is a grave defect" (p. 111), that his style is that of "an undisciplined thinker", that he "resorts to hollow-sounding platitudes." Farrington charitably acknowledges as "unfair" the idea that Darwin's loss of religious belief was due to "mental atrophy" (p. 90) (who ever claimed that it was? Farrington's motive is transparent.) Darwin, concludes Farrington, was "not a profoundly orginal thinker, not a great mind." One wonders if Farrington was familar with the phenomenon of psychological projection.

Farrington clearly had an agenda. He disliked the idea that evolutionary ideas might apply to humans, and to the human psyche in particular, and his repeated dismissals of the possibility positively drip with disdain. But time has not been kind to Farrington's perspective. While in the 1960s it was still possible for the social sciences to claim autonomy from biology, by the 1970s, such a view was already somewhat dated. Now, 30 years later, neuroscience has overtaken the field, evolutionary psychology is in its heyday, and in this respect as in so many others, Darwin has been proven to be a man far ahead of his time.

Although this book was first published in 1966, Schocken Books republished it in 1995 with a Forward by SJ Gould entitled "In Praise of Charles Darwin". Ironically, the Forward implicitly refutes Farrington's own text, leading the reader to wonder why (if the publishers had read their book's actual text) this insulting and libelous book was even reprinted. There are far better analyses of Darwin's ideas available to the general reader, and several works that reprint extracts of his writings. This antiquated and trivial little book deserves to fall into obscurity. At best, it shows the dangers of ignorance coupled with arrogance, and serves as an object lesson for those who presume to offer themselves as authorities in fields they don't begin to comprehend.… (altro)