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Evolution of an icon

Posted on 02/03/2009
University of Leicester

Evolution of an icon

A University of Leicester expert on Charles Darwin is to take a line that some people may find controversial when he speaks at a number of Darwin-focused events during this year of the 200th anniversary of Darwins birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species.

Dr Gowan Dawson, whose research focuses on the interrelations between Victorian literature and science, as well as more generally on nineteenth-century literature, history and print culture, has been invited to speak at a number of international conferences and workshops from Cambridge and Plymouth, UK, to Louisville, Kentucky, US. He has also been asked to produce a podcast on Darwin and the visual arts for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

While he welcomes the current interest in Darwin, Dr Dawson has reservations about much of the mythology that has grown up around Darwins theories of evolution and natural and sexual selection.

He explained: "What is most distinctive about the position Im taking is that I find something problematic in the Darwin Centenary. I think there is a sense of Darwin being used in a way that misrepresents the Victorian experience of Darwin. As a Victorianist I find the way that Darwin and no one else is being pumped out rather difficult.

"As a historian I find it problematic that we take 1859 and the publication of The Origin of Species as this moment that changed the world. Its a lot more complicated than that. People in Darwins own time took a lot of notice of him and he was an important figure in the 19th century but theres not nearly as much acceptance of the precise nature of his theories as we might assume and certainly not as much as there is now.

"Even in the 1880s and 1890s, the theories of evolution that people often accepted were not by

Darwin but by people like the philosopher Herbert Spencer or the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. They were really quite popular in the1890s, while The Origin of Species was not really a best seller.

"It is natural selection that Darwin does deserve the credit for discovering and thats what the 20th century took and associated with him. We need to recognise that the study of genetics and the understanding of natural selection is a 20th century thing. Natural selection was not fully accepted until the 1930s and it was not until the 1980s that Darwins theories of sexual selection were accepted. Its far more easy to accept Darwin now than it was 100 years ago.

Dr Gowan Dawson has most recently been acclaimed for his book entitled: Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability (2008), which received enthusiastic critical reviews as a highly original study, revealing new insights into Darwin, and a valuable source for all scholars of Victorian science and culture.

He is currently working on a book which will feature one of Darwins most vociferous critics, Richard Owen, often popularly vilified because of his opposition to Darwin, yet the person to whom Darwin sent the fossils from his Beagle journey for analysis. "In a bloody-minded sort of way Im enjoying promoting Owen, when everyone is concentrating on Darwin. Theres something deliberately contrary about it, he said.