A Brief History of Creation (42 page)

35
Oldenburg was released after the threat:
Dobell,
Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”
, 39.

36
In 1673, the journal included a letter:
Ibid., 41.

36
Huygens wrote that van Leeuwenhoek:
Ibid., 43.

37
“I have no style, or, pen”:
Ibid.

37
Surely, Oldenburg wrote:
Ibid., 42.

38
“The vermin only tease and pinch”:
D. F. Harris, “Antony van Leeuwenhoek the First Bacteriologist.”

39
While examining his own saliva:
Dobell,
Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”
, 239.

39
In an old man who “never washed”:
Ibid.

39
In a letter to the Royal Society:
Ibid., 243.

40
“It was just as impossible”:
H. Harris,
Things Come to Life
, 30.

41
He even convinced himself:
Most of the smallest organisms that van Leeuwenhoek observed reproduced asexually by dividing in two in a process now known as binary fission.

42
In a 1692 essay on the state of microscopy:
Bradbury,
Evolution of the Microscope
, 76.

42
One of his letters described a fit:
Dobell,
Antony van Leeuwenhoek and “His Little Animals”
, 91.

43
On receipt, a clerk at the Royal Society:
Ibid., 96.

43
The bequest was accompanied:
Ibid., 97.

Chapter 4

Science historian Shirley Roe has written extensively on the pamphlet debate between Voltaire and John Needham, both in her chapter “Biology, Atheism, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France” in the anthology
Biology and Ideology
and in her other academic works on the subject.

45
“It's better to go along with the stories”:
Park,
Grand Contraption
, 26.

47
In 1757, amid the reactionary climate:
Parton,
Life of Voltaire
, 2:277.

47
“It is dangerous to be right”:
Moland,
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire
, 14:73.

48
In a letter to his lifelong confidant:
Becker and Becker,
Encyclopedia of Ethics
, 3:1771.

48
“Is it not the most absurd of all extravagances”:
Voltaire,
Works of Voltaire
, 273.

48
“Miracles,” he said, “are very intelligible”:
Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 74.

49
“hold the Christian sect in horror”:
Gay,
Enlightenment
, 391.

52
“One can say that in a single apple pit”:
Malebranche,
De la recherche de la vérit
é
, 46–48.

53
“If one knew what all the parts”:
Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 40.

53
He compared the process to that of “a clock”:
Pinto-Correia,
Ovary of Eve
, 1.

54
French author Bernard de Fontenelle:
Broman, “Matter, Force and the Christian Worldview,” 93.

54
“
even the tiniest fibril
”:
Jacob,
Logic of Life
, p. 76.

56
“I could hardly believe my eyes”:
Dawson,
Nature's Enigma
, 95.

56
When he presented a demonstration:
Stott,
Darwin's Ghosts
, 96.

58
“My Phial swarmed with Life”:
H. Harris,
Things Come to Life
, 40.

59
He was convinced that these:
Ibid., 42.

59
“Living and animation”:
Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 45.

60
Buffon did something else in
Natural History
:
The significance of Buffon's use of the word “reproduction” is discussed in detail in François Jacob's classic
The Logic of Life
.

60
“Needham has seen, has imagined”:
Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 77.

61
In letters to friends at home:
Mitford, Nancy,
Voltaire in Love
, 23.

61
“The more I glimpse of this philosophy”:
Davidson,
Voltaire: A Life
, Kindle location 2058.

63
In a letter to Frederick:
Hamel,
Eighteenth Century Marquise
, 370.

64
Maupertuis described Needham's experiment:
Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 72.

64
“100,000 madmen of our species wearing hats”:
Voltaire,
Works of Voltaire
, vol. 33, 1829.

64
He wrote another satire,
Séance memorable
:
Ibid.

65
“If God did not exist”:
Voltaire,
Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire
, 10:402.

66
“If I examine on the one hand”:
Roger,
Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought
, 518.

66
“A watch,” Voltaire said, “proves a watchmaker”:
Israel,
Enlightenment Contested
, 364.

66
“You had made small reputation”:
Roe, “Biology, Atheism, and Politics,” 49.

68
“Men will always deceive themselves”:
D'Holbach,
System of Nature
, 11.

69
In a footnote, he invited readers:
Ibid., 21.

69
Voltaire called it “a great moral sickness”:
Stott,
Darwin's Ghosts
, 157.

69
To a friend he wrote:
Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 81.

69
“The world recoils in horror”:
Ibid., 83.

71
“I die adoring God”:
Espinasse,
Life of Voltaire
, 191.

71
He wrote a parody:
Roe, “Voltaire versus Needham,” 83.

Chapter 5

Andrew Crosse's second wife, Cornelia Crosse, published an account of his life under the title
Memorials, Scientific and Literary, of Andrew Crosse, the Electrician
. This work includes many of Crosse's own memoirs, as well as accounts from friends. James Secord's
Victorian Sensation
is a superb telling of the story behind the authorship of and associated controversy that greeted
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of Victorian-era science.

73
No right-minded architect:
Crosse and Crosse,
Memorials
, 153.

78
“Hence without parent by spontaneous birth”:
Nichols,
Romantic Natural Histories
, 129.

79
The analogy people drew:
Andrew Crosse continues to draw interest because of the rather specious theory that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley based her character Dr. Frankenstein on Crosse. The theory has even been the subject of a relatively recent book. Although Shelley did, in fact, attend a lecture Crosse had given on electricity, nothing prior to his 1836 experiment tied him to spontaneous generation, the creation of life, or anything else to do with the biological sciences. His famous experiment was stumbled upon purely by accident, and it happened several years after Shelley's book was written. Rather than Crosse influencing Shelley, it was she who influenced him, at least in the way he was later perceived.

79
“a spark of being into a lifeless thing”:
Shelley,
Frankenstein
, 34.

79
“So easy it is to deceive oneself”:
Whittaker,
History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity
, 69.

80
A year later, Aldini electrically animated:
Lane,
Life Ascending
, 149.

81
The first person known to have written:
William Gilbert, the personal physician of Queen Elizabeth I, was the first to systematically describe electrical phenomena. Gilbert was of the category of late-Renaissance scientists who had begun to break with the Greek classicists. He made a great show of his contempt for scientists who based everything on Aristotle's writings and would “toss off a few Latin words in the hearing of the ignorant rabble in token of their learning.” Yet when he gave his phenomenon a name in 1600, he used the Latin word
electricus
, meaning “from amber.” A century and a half later,
electricus
began to be replaced by the word “electricity.”

Gilbert's reference appeared in the pages of his seminal work,
De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure
, published in
1600. His interest in magnetism was an outgrowth of his interest in astronomy. Gilbert was an adherent of Copernican theories of planetary motion, in which planets orbited the sun and not vice versa, and he came up with a rather brilliant theory for why this was so. He imagined the Earth—and all the heavenly bodies—to be giant magnets with their orbital paths based on magnetic fields. It was a remarkably prescient guess at a time before Newton had formulated his theory of gravity. Gilbert's contemporary, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, arrived at many of the same conclusions.

82
Still others called it an “imponderable fluid”:
Tresch,
Romantic Machine
, 46.

83
So eager were people:
Ibid.

84
Priestley also was the first person:
Benjamin Franklin drew his friend Joseph Priestley into the field of electricity by posing to him a problem. At the time, scientists often used a kind of parlor trick to demonstrate the nature of electricity. All it required was an electrically charged metal can and a piece of cork tied to a string. The cork would be held close to the can and drawn to it. Once the can and the cork touched, the cork would itself become electrically charged, and it would be deflected away. Franklin noticed that if he placed the cork inside the can, the cork didn't move at all, which perplexed him. Priestley figured out that this lack of movement was due to the equal attraction of the cork from all sides of the can. More important, Priestley was able to deduce that electrical force followed the same mathematical behavior Newton had used to describe gravity: diminishing as the inverse square of the distance between two interacting bodies.

Priestley's book
The History and Present State of Electricity
marked the first appearance of the story of Franklin's kite flying during an electrical storm, which Priestley almost certainly heard from the famously self-promoting Franklin himself. The image of the sagacious statesman bravely flying a kite in a rainstorm became the iconic depiction of one of America's most colorful characters. Whether or not it actually happened remains an open question.

85
Crosse was a loner at heart:
Crosse and Crosse,
Memorials
, 32.

85
Many years later, he would say:
Ibid., 33.

86
Using an electric current:
Humphry Davy's contributions are beautifully recounted in
The Age of Wonder
, by Richard Holmes.

88
The novelist and future prime minister:
Secord,
Victorian Sensation
, 10.

89
He sent Crosse a personal letter:
Secord, “Curious Case,” 472.

90
In print, he was branded:
Ibid.

Chapter 6

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist
, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, is the seminal biography of Charles Darwin. Darwin's views on the origin of life have been elaborated by the scientists Juli Peretó, Jeffrey L. Bada, and Antonio Lazcano, and the historian of science James Strick.

93
FitzRoy described the volcanic beach:
Desmond and Moore,
Darwin
, 169.

94
In the three weeks before he arrived:
Ibid.

95
They encountered a group of Spanish whalers:
C. Darwin,
Voyage of the Beagle
, 381.

97
If these birds indeed turned out to be:
C. Darwin, “Darwin's Ornithological Notes,” 262.

98
“We seem to be brought somewhat near”:
C. Darwin,
Voyage of the Beagle
, 400.

100
“One might really fancy”:
Ibid., 402.

102
His ideas earned him a place:
The horrible conditions of these workhouses would one day become infamous, but at the time, they were popular with the progressive reformers who dominated the Whig Party. The Poor Laws were passed with mostly Whig support and opposed both by Tory conservatives who favored traditional charity and by working-class radicals. Though Malthusian economics was cited by supporters of the laws, Malthus himself opposed them.

102
Darwin would later write:
C. Darwin,
Autobiography
, 98–99.

102
Joseph Priestley, himself no orthodox follower:
Priestley, “Observations and Experiments,” 128.

105
“The watch must have had a maker”:
Paley,
Natural Theology
, 1.

105
When Darwin read Paley's book:
C. Darwin,
Autobiography
, 51.

105
“I fear there are but small hopes”:
Desmond and Moore,
Darwin
, 191.

106
She wrote to him afterward:
Brown,
Darwin's Origin of Species
, 46.

108
“We went a little into society”:
C. Darwin,
Charles Darwin
, 37.

110
His son later noted the book's “simplicity”:
Brown,
Darwin's Origin of Species
, 67–68.