Charles Darwin's research to prove evolution motivated by his desire to end slavery?

[n2doc]

Charles Darwin, the scientist whose theories have become a corner stone of modern biology, was motivated to carry out his famous research by a desire to rid the world of slavery, according to a new book.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
Last Updated: 10:51PM GMT 24 Jan 2009

Science historians Adrian Desmond and James Moore have compiled compelling new evidence which reveals Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery and this was the moral impetus behind his work.
Private notes and letters uncovered by the pair reveal that Darwin's opinions on slavery were far stronger than had previously been believed.
Notebooks from his five year voyage on HMS Beagle, during which Darwin first began to form his famous theories on natural selection, detail his revulsion at the slavery he witnessed in South America.
The historians have also discovered letters written by Darwin's sisters, cousins and aunts that reveal the family as highly active abolitionists. Darwin's grandfather and uncles were also key members of the anti-slavery movement.
The pair claim in a new book that Darwin partly chose to highlight the common descent of man from apes to show that all races were equal, as a rebuttal to those who insisted black people were a different, and inferior, species from those with white skin.

more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/4330132/Charles-Darwins-research-to-prove-evolution-was-motivated-by-his-desire-to-end-slavery.html

[Jackpine Radical]

1. While I don't doubt Darwin was a fervid abolitionist, the argument in this book

doesn't seem to make much sense. Origin of Species (1859) doesn't even touch on human evolution, and he waited until about 1867 to publish the Origin of Man, which was his first major discourse on humans.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Well that's an unfortunate claim

Science shouldn't have a social/political opinion-shaping agenda, no matter how benign.

Fortunately there is not one line of Darwin that is not independently analyzed and verified (or found wanting) a hundred times over so any personal motive (or claim of such) is irrelevant at this point.

But it's still an unpleasant sort of story. (Not comenting on the merits of the claim, but on the nature of the claim)

Political agendas informing the life sciences is a long, sordid story. (There were plenty of people motivated to find black people a separate species and it makes us disrespect their work, with good reason. Same goes for Marxist inspired belief in 'blank slate' psychology and inheritance of acquired traits.)

[BlooInBloo]

3. Desmond and Moore are both astonishing well-trained and well-informed thinkers...

If they say something, there's good reason. It is of course perfectly possible that they be wrong. But there's not a single person on DU - or collection of same - who are qualified to judge their work.

Tangentially, one thing that is very likely is that the idiot journalism majors simply got it wrong, in reporting what Desmond and Moore are saying.

That at least, I am qualified to judge - as are many others. So I thank you for determining my next book for me. :)

[RoyGBiv]

4. I'll wait to read the book ...

But I suspect this story about the book is heavily slanted.

As noted already, Origin of Species isn't even about human evolution.

Reading some of the excerpts, what I'm seeing are several anecdotal comments taken from letters that were standard at the time Darwin was alive for anyone who wasn't ardently pro-slavery. (One could even cherry pick such rather generic commentaries from certain slave owners to "prove" the extent of their opposition to slavery.) That said, Darwin's family was certainly in the abolitionist column.

Still, I'm going to need some very clear evidence to be convinced abolitionism was in any way connected to Darwin's work.

[TZ]

5. Yes I agree.

Ironically enough there was a poster in the R/T forum awhile back who claimed that Darwinism was the same as "social Darwinism" and therefore was racist!
:crazy:

[pokerfan]

6. Reminds me of that movie

that starred some bit-part actor, eye-drop huckster and former Nixon speech-writer? Argued rather unsuccessfully that science, especially "Darwinism" as he called it, leads people to commit genocide.