Charles Darwin OS
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
Charles Darwin,
Old Salopian
The following article on Shrewsbury School’s most famous alumnus was written by Andrew Allott, former Head of Biology.
In a brief account of his life, Charles Darwin wrote: “In the summer of 1818 I went to Dr Butler’s great school in Shrewsbury. I boarded at this school so that I had the great advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy.”
Photo: Darwin’s name on School Register
Caption: Darwin entered Shrewsbury School at the age of nine.
In his first year at Shrewsbury he was modestly placed in the class academic order. Whilst rising a little through the ranks as the years passed, he nevertheless remained less than enchanted by Shrewsbury’s mainstream academic subjects, for which he had neither inclination nor particular talent. He describes his schooldays with great affection, although he also says that the classics taught to him were a blank as far as his education went.
“Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr Butler’s school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught, except a little ancient geography and history. ... During my whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Vergil or Homer, whilst I was in morning chapel; but the exercise was utterly useless, for every verse was forgotten in forty-eight hours.”
As with some modern-day Salopians, enjoyment and intellectual development came less from lessons and more from extra-curricular activities. In Darwin’s case these included reading Shakespeare, conducting chemistry experiments in the garden shed at his family’s home and of course roaming the countryside in search of beetles and other delights.
“The fact that we (Charles and his brother Erasmus) worked at chemistry somehow got known at school, and as it was an unprecedented fact, I was nick-named “Gas”. I was also once publicly rebuked by the headmaster, Dr Butler, for thus wasting my time over such useless subjects.”
Photo: Darwin’s doodles in his Classical Atlas of the World
Doodles and practice signatures drawn by the young Charles Darwin in his copy of the Atlas of the Classical World by his Headmaster Dr Butler.
We have few records of the places in Shropshire that Darwin visited as a boy, but he clearly loved the area.
“In 1822 a vivid delight in scenery was first awakened in my mind during a riding tour in the borders of Wales and this has lasted longer than any other aesthetic pleasure.”
Perhaps to please his father, after leaving Shrewsbury School a year early at the age of 16, Darwin entered Edinburgh University to study Medicine. He hated it and soon left for Cambridge, where he completed the Tripos and indulged his interests in geology and many aspects of natural history.
Photo: Beetle hunting letter
In 1828, when he was struggling to learn enough Mathematics to pass an exam that would enable him to be eligible for an Honours degree at Cambridge, he wrote in a letter to fellow Old Salopian and lifelong friend Charles Whitley, an eminent mathematician:
“I am as idle as idle can be: one of the causes you have hit on, irresolution, the other being made fully aware that my noddle is not capacious enough to retain or comprehend Mathematics. — Beetle hunting & such things I grieve to say is my proper sphere.”
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/charles-thomas-whitley
Darwin’s later achievements show that he was being very modest in making these remarks, but he would probably have achieved far less if he had not had the stroke of luck of being invited to join H.M.S. Beagle as ship’s naturalist in 1831.
This was the ultimate gap year experience — nearly five years in fact, during which Darwin had a wealth of exciting and revelatory experiences. The Beagle circumnavigated the world, visiting many islands and all of the southern continents. Darwin proved himself to be a highly observant and perceptive biologist. He did not return with his theory of natural selection already formulated, but he had all of the stimulus material from which to work it out. This probably happened in 1838.
Photo: Darwin statue
Shropshire sculptor Jemma Pearson was commissioned by the School to make a sculpture of Charles Darwin to commemorate the millennium. It was unveiled by Sir David Attenborough on 9th September 2000 and depicts Darwin as a young man during his explorations on The Beagle, carrying geological hammers, a notebook, flask, stick, and a satchel for carrying specimens.
Photo: Charles Darwin as a young man
There has been speculation about reasons for the 20-year gap between the formulation of the theory of natural selection and its publication, in 1859, in Darwin’s book ‘On the Origin of Species’. It has often been suggested that Darwin was fearful of the response that his ideas would receive. This implication of a lack of courage is probably wrong, and a likelier explanation is that he was simply too busy writing other books. He wrote and published more in those 20 years than most scientists do in a lifetime.
Whether Darwin feared the consequences of publication or not, On the Origin of Species did have a huge impact. It was immediately attacked and continues to be attacked to this day.
What then was the contribution that the Origin of Species made to our understanding of the natural world?
It was not the idea that species can change over the generations into new forms. Others, including Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, had already proposed this. Perhaps surprisingly, Darwin scarcely uses the word ‘evolution’ in the early editions of the Origin, instead using phrases such as ‘the mutability of species’, though he does nevertheless give us a huge amount of evidence for what we now call evolution.
Darwin’s contribution was the mechanism — the driving force for evolution. He explains by means of a series of observations and deductions how natural selection can change species over time.
Photo: Charles Darwin in his later years
Photo: 1st edition of On the Origin of Species
Natural selection underpins the whole of modern Biology and it has proved to be a powerful way of interpreting the natural world. There are many other scientific ideas in the Origin, but Darwin’s impact has spread far beyond science.
Natural selection implies a rather bleak view of the lives of animals, with an endless struggle for existence in which nature is red in tooth and claw. About this struggle, Darwin wrote: “When we reflect on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.”
This does not seem to offer much consolation, but we should be clear that Darwin was not writing about human existence here. He would have been deeply unhappy about the way that his ideas have been misused to justify extreme political viewpoints and certain social and economic policies. His horror at the suffering caused by primitive surgical procedures that he saw in Edinburgh, his hatred of the brutality of native tribes that he encountered on Tierra del Fuego, his grief at the loss of a beloved daughter and obvious kindliness as a father all give us an insight into Darwin’s own nature and make it certain that Darwin would not have subscribed to the view that competitiveness should dominate human lives.
Photo: Charles Darwin statue outside the Old Schools, Shrewsbury
We may be animal in our origins, but using properties that have emerged during our evolution we can rise above the animal kingdom in the way that our lives are lived. If we cooperate rather than compete with each other, we free ourselves from the struggle for existence and the suffering that it can cause.
Andrew Allott