I t was Tuesday, the 16th of August 2022, and we visited the house of Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1919), the English naturalist famous for his theory of evolution.
He was born on the 12th of February, 1809, at Shrewsbury. Robert Waring Darwin was his father, and Susannah was his mother. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin was a polymath physician, poet, philosopher and inventor.
Darwin’s mother died when he was eight; his eldest sister, Caroline, brought him up. He was always grateful to her for instilling in him a humanitarian spirit. In 1818 he entered Shrewsbury school. Later he complained that he was taught only classics, never realising his debt to them for providing a sound basis for his education. He was a poor student, and in 1825 his father criticised him, saying, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.” He was then sent to Edinburgh University, Scotland, to study medicine, but that also was a failure. As there was no future for Darwin in medicine, he left Edinburgh in 1827 and was sent to Cambridge to prepare for Holy orders in the Church of England. At Christ’s College, he paid little attention to his official studies and fell in with a set of sporting young men as keen on shooting, riding and hunting as he was. But he encountered some distinguished scientists – in particular, John Stevens Henslow, Professor of Botany, who influenced him profoundly by stimulating his interest in natural history and by giving him confidence in himself. He graduated from Cambridge and learned to apply critical judgement. But he was naive in methodology.
In 1831, the Royal Navy sent the ship HMS Beagle to map the coast of South America, the Falklands islands and the Galapagos islands. Designed as a fighting ship, HMS Beagle was built at the Woolwich Dockyard in London. The captain of the ship Beagle was Robert Fitzroy, who later became Admiral Fitzroy. After completing its work in South America, Beagle sailed to the Galapagos Islands and on to the South Pacific, New Zealand, and Australia, returning to the UK in October 1836.
On the voyage, the Navy needed their knowledge to tighten Britain’s imperial grip over South America. The ship’s captain, an amateur scientist, decided to add a geologist to the expedition to study geological formations they might encounter on the way. After several professional geologists refused his invitation, the captain offered the job to a twenty-year-old Cambridge graduate, Charles Darwin. As he was interested in geology and natural sciences, he jumped at the opportunity, and the rest was history. Darwin explored the continent’s remote regions, collecting plants, animals and fossils, and taking copious notes.
The captain spent his time on the voyage drawing military maps while Darwin collected the empirical data and formulated the insights that would eventually become the theory of evolution. As such, launched 200 years ago, HMS Beagle is now commonly described as one of the most important ships in history – thanks to those observations on evolution and natural selection of Charles Darwin.
My son Dr. Syed Ali Tarek, my wife Dilruba, my daughter-in-law Sofina Sunzida and my little grandson Azlan were in our team. We started near at 5 pm and reached the spot after 40 minutes. Darwin’s house is located at Downe, a village within the London Borough of Bromley but beyond the London urban sprawl. As all of us were members of English Heritage, we were allowed complimentary entry. English Heritage is a charity managing over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places, including prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses.
The house is within a large garden full of flowers and fruit trees. Apple and the pears we saw were not yet ripening. We noticed the house’s condition is excellent, with guides and staff for the visitors. Entering the house, we went to the first floor. There is a lift for ageing people. We started roaming from one room to another and curiously observed different items preserved to watch for the visitors. We were astonished to come across vast collections of books. In almost every room, there were books akin to a mini library. We were allowed to see the room where Darwin drafted the manuscript of his famous book; Darwin mostly used the living room for his research work.
He preserved different bird and animal skeletons and fossils, which are still in their original form. His bedroom and dining room were gorgeous. All of his crockery and utensils are preserved nicely. His Diaries, Notebooks, handwriting, manuscripts, etc., are appropriately preserved in his house. Here lies the greatness of a nation. Charles Darwin was a researcher in the truest sense, and most of the preserved items were related to reading, writing and research.
We noticed a family tree in the right corner of the first floor. Darwin came from a great family, and his father was hopeful that he would be a doctor. But he failed to fulfil his father’s dream. Yet he neither disgraced himself nor his family members. Instead, he will be remembered for his outstanding contributions to the field of biology and beyond.
Modern-day science is a unique tradition of knowledge as it openly admits collective ignorance regarding the most crucial question. Darwin never argued that he was the seal of the biologists and that he had solved the riddle of life once and for all. After centuries of extensive scientific research, biologists admit that they still don’t have any reasonable explanation for how brains produce consciousness. Physicists admit that they don’t know what caused the Big Bang or how to reconcile quantum mechanics with the theory of general relativity.
We have witnessed that Einstein’s theory of relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn’t contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don’t care whether space and time are absolute or relative. In contrast, Darwin’s theory deprives us of our “souls”. If you go to the depths of the theory of evolution, you will realise there is an absence of “soul” that we commonly perceive as natural. It is a terrifying thought not only to devout Christians, Muslims or Hindus but also to many secular people who don’t hold any explicit religious beliefs but want to believe that each human possesses an eternal individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact.
We have already mentioned that he was naive in methodology. In Darwin’s time, science was supposed to progress only by inductive methods. Darwin wrote, “I worked on true Baconian principles and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale.” It was invalidated by Darwin himself when he wrote to Lyell (the 1st of June, 1860): “Without the making of theories, I am convinced that there are no observations.” Thus, he recognised that there are no such things as purely inductive observations, for if the observer had not already in his hand an idea of what he was looking for, drive from deduction, he would not observe anything at all. Darwin’s method was to spin a hypothesis about anything that struck his attention and then to deduct from its consequences that should be followed and could be refuted or verified.
Darwin is considered one of the founders of the science of ecology because he solved the problem of the origin and development of adaptation as a result of selection pressure and that modification descent does not take place in a vacuum but is strongly related to the ecological niches occupied by the species. Darwin published his discoveries about evolution and natural selection in a book that he called an “abstract” of the entire work. This abstract was the origin of species, which was published on the 24th of November 1859, and sold out immediately. By 1872 the work had run through six editions.
 With this book, Darwin brought down on himself enemies of two kinds. The first was old-fashioned scientists, some like Adam Sedgwick, who refused to admit Darwin’s method of using hypothesis as acceptable in science, and like Richard Owen, who was then enjoying the reputation of being the leading English biologist. He became crazy with jealousy and, devoid of all scruples, wanted is discredited Darwin at any cost. The other class of enemies were the upholders of orthodox religious beliefs, to whom Darwin administered two shocks: if evolution was true, the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis was false or, at least, not literally true, and evolution worked automatically by natural selection, there was no room for divine guidance and design in the production of living plants and animals, including man, on earth. Several prominent British scientists and philosophers participated, including Thomas Henry Huxley, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Benjamin Brodie, Joseph Dalton Hooker, and Robert FitzRoy joined the battle at the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the 30th of June, 1860 widely known as “1860 Oxford evolution debate” or “Huxley-Wilberforce debate”.
Robert Owen had carefully coached Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, who attacked Huxley condescendingly and contemptuously over Darwin’s view. Huxley tore the bishop to pieces in his thoughtful reply, and the Church of England never formally attempted to cross swords with science again. The debate has been called “one of the great stories of the history of science”, and it is often regarded as a key moment in the acceptance of evolution.
Darwin published three more books as extensions and amplifications of the principles expressed in the origin of species. These were the Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), which applied the principle of evolution to man, including his moral sense, and fray to natural selection; and the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).
To Huxley, he wrote on the 9th of January, 1860, “The history of error is quite unimportant.”
 He had no historical or political sense whatever, as may be seen in what he wrote to the Austrian explorer Karl Von Scherzer (Dec.26, 1869): “what a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany on the connexion between socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection.” Â
He was not unaware of Karl Marx, for when the latter asked permission to dedicate the English edition of Das Kapital to him, Darwin refused because he did not wish to be associated with attacks on religion. However, our religious mindset always disagrees with the Darwinian theory of natural selection or the theory of evolution. The discovery of Darwin was not new in human history. Once, the Far East and Islamic world produced minds as intelligent and curious as those of Europe. However, we agree that for a long period, they did not produce anything close to Newtonian physics or Darwinian biology. But the West cannot deny that coming in contact with Graco-Roman thoughts and ideas; the Islamic thinkers developed every branch of knowledge through research and observation. Generally, the animal world’s lifestyle change is observed when living conditions are changed. It was first narrated by Zahij (Died: 225 Hizri). However, Ibne Maskawah (Died: 421), the first Muslim thinker, gave a clear and modern narration of the evolution of human beings. Muslim saint Moulana Jalal Uddin Rumi explained the question of immortality within a frame of biological evolution, which hardly contradicts the inner significance of the Holy Quran. The modern believer in evolution came to a conclusion showing no reason that the present condition of the physical and mental form of human beings is the highest stage of biological development and death at the end of this journey. It brought frustration and worries instead of hope and inspiration. In this context, poet and philosopher Dr. Allama Mohammad Iqbal felt the necessity of another Rumi to bring hope and activism again. Destruction of the human body is not the end of existence. Allama Iqbal elaborated on this issue in his book “The Reconstruction of Religious thought in Islam.”
Charles Darwin enjoys extraordinary respect for his outstanding contribution to formulating the theory of evolution through natural selection. During our visit to Natural History Museum London, we have seen the Gallery of Darwin and the importance of his discoveries. Anyone who loves knowledge must respect his devotion and curiosity for knowing the change in nature. A true Muslim cannot ignore “History”, “Nature”, and “Compassion” and their inner unity. A Muslim thinker is more eligible to understand and explain the findings of Darwin in a better way, positive and more creative. We are now walking on the highway of modern science and technology, more concerned about the body than the soul. Life is changing. New thoughts and technologies are developing. Biology and computer science are working together and processing a new method which is called Dataism. Now slowly but surely, artificial intelligence is taking over most of the tasks previously performed by human beings.
In this stage of development, we should look forward to seeing the unique future of humankind. We should not waste our time quarrelling with Darwin or any other scientist because they were devoted men to unearthing the hidden truth of nature. They have thrown light on the darkness and driven out the mist of ignorance. Faith, philosophy and science should work together to bring much-needed peace and happiness in our worldly life. Like Charles Darwin, those who will devote their lives to the betterment of humankind will be respected and remembered.
References:
1. The Origin of Species – By Charles Darwin
2. The Descent of Man – By Charles Darwin
3. Encyclopedia Britannica
4. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam – By Dr Allama Mohammad Iqbal
5. Theories of Evolution and Creation (Bengali) – By Muhammad Abdur Rahim
6. A Brief History of Tomorrow – By Yuval Noah Harari
7. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – By Yuval Noah Harari
(The writer is senior journalist)
