This is something I've been planning to set up since late March, but I could just never get to it... But I think the time is now ripe.

Ladies and gentlemen, feel free to use this thread as a general hub for discussing ATL developments of Darwin's life and work. :) :cool:

And, to start us off...
 
...I'll submit a few POD ideas of my own:

- developments in 19th century biology (including the theory of evolution) if Darwin was never born
- Darwin sticks to his plans of becoming a clergyman
- Darwin marries someone else that his first cousin, and this somewhat negates his OTL interest in early genetics theory and experiments with inbreeding between organisms (in OTL, he had worries that the close blood ties he had with his wife, and the history of close blood ties between their two families, was one of the main causes why some of his children were more susceptible to certain medical problems, or why they died early)
- Darwin doesn't get ardent support from Thomas Henry Huxley for his formulations on evolutionary theory, and finds it harder to promote them further and find greater intellectual backing for his research (also, a directly related POD idea: how he could overcome/circumvent said ATL bad luck)
- something other in the 1860 Oxford Evolution Debate goes awry and Darwin, Huxley and other proponents of early evolutionary theory are either not that succesful or become marginalised (could this potentially slow down the research and acceptance of evolutionary principles ?)
- Darwin gets to actually try out his planned, but in OTL never carried out research concerning the secrets behind sexual dimorphism's role in peacock mating


Feel free to come up with more interesting PODs ! :cool: I would really appreciate it. :)

The thread is your's, ladies and gentlemen.
 
Gregor Mendel's 1865 paper on inheritance and genetics gets somewhat more attention at the time, and Darwin becomes aware of it. He recognizes that he now has a theoretical basis for inheritance, and incorporates its results into later editions of On the Origin of Species. The genetic basis of evolutionary theory is discovered 30 years earlier than in OTL.
 
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Darwin doesn't catch Chagas Disease while in South America (if that was the cause of his later ill health, as has plausibly been suggested) and better health in later years than IOTL lets him produce even more work.
 
Alfred Wallace ensures that evolution is discussed in the mid XIXth century even if Darwin doesn't exist. His work was completely independent. Remember Darwin sat on his hypotheses because he was worried about the reaction until told that Wallace was about to publish (believe it or not Darwin was the establishment unlike Wallace!) so the metaphorical brown stuff would still have hit the hypothetical revolving implement..
 
Yeah, good point about Wallace. :)

Still, do you think there might be divergences if Darwin gave up on his research around that time and received less recognition ?
 
There probably wouldn't be the furore over evolution or at least Natural Selection if the Descent of Man isn't published.
EDIT Or it is called The Ascent of Man!:)
 
Well without Darwin Natural selection would probably have a more diffuse authorship. The idea was out there and would only be delayed a few years. However having a slower rise to prominence would not affect the final shape of the consensus.

So probably less difference than you might think after a hundred years. Of course with multiple parents the philosophical implications would have a wider range and variations (cooperative selection, sexual selection, cultural selection) would be more popular.

In the 20thC I suggest the wider base of natural selection based ideas would make it less likely to be picked on by the new American religious movements.

Of course since they have to pick on something to attack and the other possibilities are very unpleasant, we may live in a world modified by a time travelling Darwin:D
 
No Alfred Russel Wallace. Evolutionary thought is set back decades, and Darwin is forced to work from a blank slate. It's going to be an uphill struggle getting the theory widely-recognized.
 
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What happens if there's no theory and nobody to take up the torch until decades later? If the theory of evolution is introduced decades later the body of evidence for it is going to be that much stronger at it's initial presentation.
 
A little of topic. I found a couple of Darwin's lost dairies a few years ago at work. They had be lost for over 50 years. Did I get a thank you? Did I buggery.:mad:
 
Apparently there was an arboriculturalist whose earlier work on the subject both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew
 
A little of topic. I found a couple of Darwin's lost dairies a few years ago at work. They had be lost for over 50 years. Did I get a thank you? Did I buggery.:mad:

Oh, wow. :eek: You really did achieve such a discovery ? That's awesome to hear ! :cool: Though it's a pity that they didn't thank you. :(

Apparently there was an arboriculturalist whose earlier work on the subject both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew

Good find ! I guess we could use the non-existence or ATL turn of Matthew's work as another potential POD ? Different influences on Darwin's and Wallace's research and all that...
 
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Some more POD ideas I've had concerning Darwin:

- he sticks to geology for most of his life, and he aids some early paleonthologists in their work, but doesn't branch out into biological research on his own. Wallace might or might not overtake him in this particular field of research. Given that in OTL, Wallace's evolutionary research was several years behind Darwin's research, we could see a somewhat delayed and more poorly understood Or one that is backed up by less practical evidence, given how Wallace started experimenting later.
- he remains more hesitant about publishing his over 20 years of accumulated research during the late 1850s. Two possible reasons could be that he doesn't learn about Wallace coming to the same conclusions in parallel soon enough, or that he learns about Wallace's conclusions as in OTL, but still proves more hesitant to publish his findings in time (thus possibly butterflying away the timely OTL publishing of On the Origin of Species).
- he settles down with Emma somewhere else than Kent (or the southeast in general). The absence of the local geology influences his ideas on deep geological time (and its effects on evolution) in different ways. For instance, maybe he settles down in an area with geology of Paleozoic origins, instead of the Mesozoic chalk bedrocks of southeastern England that he researched in OTL (and that provoked him to start thinking about the erosion of the bedrock and how long it must have eroded by natural processes since the times of its height).
- there's a fire at his house (someone accidentally lights the furniture, the house is struck by lightning, etc.), and some or all of his notes are destroyed, with him having no backup. Even if he reconstructs some of the notes from memory, he will have lost a lot of data and years of research, and some of the excellent practical evidence backing up his theories on natural selection and evolutionary pressures gets irretrievably lost. This could make him even more hesitant to publish his theories, given how obsessive he always was about testing them first.
- a scenario similar to the above-mentioned one happens, but in this case, someone accidentally throws out his package with the notes into the garbage while cleaning up the cupboard below the staircase where he used to keep the package. :D :eek:
- he publishes an ATL equivalent of On the Origin... several years earlier, even if it's at the expense of citing less empirical evidence than in the OTL version of the work. Ergo, he's less obsessive about conducting decades worth of practical research in the garden, greenhouse and countryside than in OTL.
- he publishes his findings later, because Wallace's ATL research is slowed down compared to the OTL one. Thus, Darwin isn't pressured to basically compile his notes and write his first great work in just under sixteen months, at breakneck speed, just to trump Wallace.

What happens if there's no theory and nobody to take up the torch until decades later? If the theory of evolution is introduced decades later the body of evidence for it is going to be that much stronger at it's initial presentation.

Also a possible variant. Especially if we butterfly away both Darwin and Wallace and potential ATL researchers in other countries that might turn out like them, and if we also butterfly away some of the geologists and botanists that layed the groundwork for Darwin's and Wallace's curiosity to research the various topics in greater detail.

No Alfred Russel Wallace. Evolutionary thought is set back decades, and Darwin is forced to work from a blank slate. It's going to be an uphill struggle getting the theory widely-recognized.

Yeah, even moreso than in OTL. And if Darwin never went down this route of scientific interest, having Wallace missing to fill in the gap would be a real setback. Of course, as I've noted, some ATL researcher that could replace them might pop up in some other country (France, Germany, Poland, Russia, who knows...), though that's more of a "worse-outcome-with-a-silver-lining" variation on this ATL scenario.

Well without Darwin Natural selection would probably have a more diffuse authorship. The idea was out there and would only be delayed a few years. However having a slower rise to prominence would not affect the final shape of the consensus.

So probably less difference than you might think after a hundred years. Of course with multiple parents the philosophical implications would have a wider range and variations (cooperative selection, sexual selection, cultural selection) would be more popular.

Yeah, that's a cool implication ! :cool:

In the 20thC I suggest the wider base of natural selection based ideas would make it less likely to be picked on by the new American religious movements.

This could prove rather favourable to the better defense of the ideas, yes. Though I'm sure that your typical run-of-the-mill fundamentalists/literalists would still find excuses for "debunking" any theories on evolutionary processes.

Of course since they have to pick on something to attack and the other possibilities are very unpleasant, we may live in a world modified by a time travelling Darwin:D

:D
 
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ASB: After the loss of his daughter, Darwin throws himself into his studies and, using what he has learned of selection, breeds an army of intelligent, fierce animals, including but not limited to Darwin's fighter finches, gorilla warriors, and suicide bombardier beetles. He then proceeds to gradually conquer the planet and shape it in his image.
 
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