What if Charles Darwin had died young?

What if Charles Darwin had died as a young man, long before taking his trip on the Beagle.

Would the theory of evolution be delayed? If so, roughly how long, and what would be the ramifications of the delay?

For example, without the theory of evolution there would be no eugenics movement.

Well, at most, the effect of no Charles Darwin would be that we woulnd't be talking about 'Darwinian evolution', and that someone else's name would have been tied to the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin was not the only person who came up with the idea of evolution, and there were contemporary scientists who were developing similar theories independantly from Darwin (Wallace?, Lamarck?), so the development of a theory of evolution would have been pretty much inevitable.

I'm pretty sure that the development of a theory of evolution would not really have been delayed without Darwin.

The credit for the theory would probably have then gone to Alfred Russel Wallace.
If, on the otherhand, nobody comes up with it, our knowledge of biology and the natural world will be greatly diminished.

Or, as they suggested in "The Science of Discworld": People will agree on a theory similar to Intelligent Design.

Darwin was only prompted to hurry up and publish his work when Wallace was about to do so.

BTW, Darwin didn't discover evolution, he discovered natural selection a mechcanism of Evolution. Lamarck was the first one to propose evolution.

We would have Darwinism, just under a different name. Darwin was building on several other people's work, and others were catching up on him. As I recall, he almost did't publish, but another botanist approached him with his own ideas and he reached an agreement whereby Darwin published first.

Basically, Darwin's demise has little effect other than delaying evolution's publishing for a few years at most.

It was definitely in the air. As pointed out above Wallace discovered it independently, and it would only have been a matter of (short)
time until somebody else came up with it. What Darwin had backing him was years of study and a fair bit of prestige; somebody else might have had a bit more of a struggle.

Darwin proposed natural selection as the mechanism for evolution, he did not discover evolution. Natual selection was a brilliant insight and it was this discovery that really allowed the sciences (all of them) to advance to the present level we have.

Wallace also proposed a similar mechanism but not as detailed or meticulously researched and argued as Darwin's. Would someoneelse have advanced natural selection as the mechanism that evolution used? Possibly but probably at a much later date.

It might be more interesting to imagine the consequences of Herbert Spencer dying young. He's the one who came up with the concept of "survival of the fittest", which conveniently tied in with the Victorian socio-economic ethos and eventually spawned social Darwinism.

A quote from a recent article in The New Yorker about Spencer:

In his day, Spencer was the greatest of philosophical hedgehogs: his popularity stemmed from the fact that he had one big, easily grasped idea and a mass of more particular ideas that supposedly flowed from the big one. The big idea was evolution, but, while Darwin applied it to species change, speculating about society and culture only with reluctance, Spencer saw evolution working everywhere. “This law of organic progress is the law of all progress,” he wrote, “whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the development of Life upon its surface, in the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, [or] Art.” Spencer has been tagged as a social Darwinist, but it would be more correct to think of Darwin as a biological Spencerian. Spencer was very well known as an evolutionist long before Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” was published, in 1859, and people who had limited interest in the finches of the Galápagos had a great interest in whether the state should provide for the poor or whether it was right to colonize India.

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Hendryk said:

It might be more interesting to imagine the consequences of Herbert Spencer dying young. He's the one who came up with the concept of "survival of the fittest", which conveniently tied in with the Victorian socio-economic ethos and eventually spawned social Darwinism.

A quote from a recent article in The New Yorker about Spencer:

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Spencer was really a Lamarcian. He did not have a concept of natural selection before Darwin. Survival of the fittest as understood in a societial sense is not the same as natural selection in Darwin's concept of it in biology.

Civilization and human society of course does evolve in a Lamarcian not Darwinian way so Spencer was able to persue this idea legitimately. Once so-called Social Darwinian apologists for the exploiting class began to pervert natural selection as an excuse for humans to be anti-social it took on a grimmer meaning.

Ibn Warraq said:

What if Charles Darwin had died as a young man, long before taking his trip on the Beagle.

Would the theory of evolution be delayed? If so, roughly how long, and what would be the ramifications of the delay?

For example, without the theory of evolution there would be no eugenics movement.

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if you really want to delay the theory of evolution's arrival on the social stage, have A.R.Wallace either die on the burning Brazilian ship, or keep him a day laborer in Wales.

without Wallace's impetus, Darwin was quite happy to spend over half his life gathering together notes for his great book....what he published in OTL, The Origin Of Species, Darwin considered an abstract.

Good point, Keenir...

"After Charles Darwin's death in 1882, a huge mass of notes concerning the evolution of life was discovered in his study. After a ten-year attempt to organise and simplify his notes, the first volume "On the Principles of Natural Selection in the Preservation of Favoured Races" (D. Appleton and Sons, 982 pages) was published in 1892, with three subsequent volumes, plus two of notes and addenda, following at periods of several years. Though praised by some eminent scientists, the work remained largely ignored until the 1920s..."

Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Mendel, Spencer...

Wallace sent his letter outlining a theory of natural selection to Darwin in 1858 because the latter was a well-known scientist at the centre of an extensive web of biological and geological correspondence. If he had not had Darwin to send it to, there were several alternatives - Huxley, Hooker, Lyell to name three. It is likely that his work would have been published, but quite possible it would not have made the "splash" Origin of Species did: Wallace was an impoverished and obscure collector (and, horror of horrors, a socialist), while Darwin was rich and respectable. Moreover, Darwin had taken the central idea much further than Wallace, and had amassed far more evidence for the fact (as well as the mechanism) of evolution. It should be remembered that the theory of natural selection, unlike evolution itself, was not widely accepted until the early 20th century; and indeed, Darwin's ignorance of the mechanism of heredity made this quite reasonable - if the hereditary mechanism blended the parents' characteristics, as he thought, rather than recombining them, as it does and as Mendel's experiments suggested when rediscovered in 1900, natural selection could only act to eliminate deleterious mutations. However, Darwin's ideas were then available to be synthesised with Mendel's, while Wallace's might have been forgotten. So all in all, I'd say that if Darwin had died young, or fallen overboard from the Beagle and drowned, there would probably have been a considerable delay both in establishing the fact of evolution, and in appreciating the central role of natural selection.

On a related topic, and the reason I came here - I am sure I have read an alternate history short story in which the Soviet Union never comes into existence, but the USA undergoes a "Spencerist" revolution, inspired by Herbert Spencer, who probably coined the term "survival of the fittest" (although Darwin also used it), and whose ideas underlie much of what is often called "social Darwinism". Does anyone know of this? Thanks.

If Darwin had died young and Wallace published his work in the mid-1860s, there would be one critical consequence. Darwin, if must be remembered, was upper-class and a well-regarded member of the British establishment. Wallace was a socialist radical and member of the working class. Many of the objections to evolution before and after the publication of On the Origin of Species centered around the idea that they would destroy the social order. The fact that such a moderate and retired figure as Darwin published it was a major factor in its gradual acceptance.

If natural selection was discovered by a radical, low-born socialist rather than an upper-class aristocrat, we could expect much more fanatical opposition to it from political conservatives.

Anaxagoras said:

If Darwin had died young and Wallace published his work in the mid-1860s, there would be one critical consequence. Darwin, if must be remembered, was upper-class and a well-regarded member of the British establishment. Wallace was a socialist radical and member of the working class. Many of the objections to evolution before and after the publication of On the Origin of Species centered around the idea that they would destroy the social order. The fact that such a moderate and retired figure as Darwin published it was a major factor in its gradual acceptance.

If natural selection was discovered by a radical, low-born socialist rather than an upper-class aristocrat, we could expect much more fanatical opposition to it from political conservatives.

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More So, than Today ...

I for One, Find that Hard to Believe ...

Reactionaries ALWAYS Display Resistance to Change, Whereas Scientists are Trained to Embrace it; If Anything a Slower Acceptance would Make Perversions Such as Fanatical Eugenics Impossible!

ZaphodBeeblebrox said:

More So, than Today ...

I for One, Find that Hard to Believe ...

Reactionaries ALWAYS Display Resistance to Change, Whereas Scientists are Trained to Embrace it; If Anything a Slower Acceptance would Make Perversions Such as Fanatical Eugenics Impossible!

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True, but today opposition to evolution by political conservatives is more or less confined to the United States. What we might see is anti-evolution attitudes which exist only in the United States IOTL extended throughout the West ITTL.

P.S. What's with the caps?

Walker said:

Darwin was only prompted to hurry up and publish his work when Wallace was about to do so.

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ironically, it was Darwin who originally held to a Lamarckian view of evolution -- remember that tale about giraffes' necks getting longer?

BTW, Darwin didn't discover evolution, he discovered natural selection a mechcanism of Evolution. Lamarck was the first one to propose evolution.

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I think Erasamus Darwin (Charles' granddad) did so before Lamarck.

Keenir said:

ironically, it was Darwin who originally held to a Lamarckian view of evolution -- remember that tale about giraffes' necks getting longer?



I think Erasamus Darwin (Charles' granddad) did so before Lamarck.

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Evolution was up in the air at the time. Lots of people came up with the idea, which was (in scientific circles) more or less accepted by the mid-19th century; what Lamarck did was come up with a mechanism, and Darwin came up with a working mechanism. I'd personally say practically no differences at all.

Anaxagoras said:

True, but today opposition to evolution by political conservatives is more or less confined to the United States. What we might see is anti-evolution attitudes which exist only in the United States IOTL extended throughout the West ITTL.

P.S. What's with the caps?

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OOH, Point Taken ...

However, American Neo-Conservatism is Currently being Exported, Look for it at a School Near you ...

P.S. You Noticed it didn't you?

ZaphodBeeblebrox said:

P.S. You Noticed it didn't you?

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I noticed it being a serious grammatical flaw, yes.