Darwin and the Mofaotyof Principle

The BBC “Darwin” Season
Darwin’s Lost World, Martin Brasier (OUP, February 2009). Hardback, £16.99. ISBN: 978-0-19-954897-2

February 12th 2009 was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, while November 24th 2009 marks 150 years since the publication of his groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, which laid out the theory of evolution by natural selection. It is a theory that has revolutionised our understanding of all life on planet Earth and our own place in it. Now supported by, literally, mountains of evidence, it still remains controversial in the face of religious dogma and, often wilful, misunderstanding.

It is heartening, therefore, to see the BBC invest in a major season of programming that celebrates Darwin’s life and work. At the same time there is an avalanche of publications which highlight his theory and subsequent investigations of deep time. Not least of these is Darwin’s Lost World: The Hidden History of Animal Life by Martin Brasier.

In the best traditions of public broadcasting, the BBC Darwin season is spread over its entire range of television and radio channels, and includes a multiplatform presence in the internet. The season began with ‘What Darwin Didn’t Know’, a 90 minute film presented by Armand Marie Leroi which looked at Darwin and evolution through the 21st century field of genetics. This showed how statements that Darwin could not prove in 1859 have since been proven through the mapping of genes. It included the mind-blowing concept that the eyes of all living creatures are activated by the same gene; the same gene that triggers eye-development in humans triggers it in flies. Therefore the development of the eye can be traced right back to the absolute beginnings of the simplest form of seeing, or to put it another way — we share a common ancestor with flies.

The most publicised single programme was ‘Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life’ presented by David Attenborough. Quite rightly considered a television legend, David Attenborough is a passionate Darwinian and sees evolution as the cornerstone of all his thinking; Charles Darwin’s ideas have permeated everything he has ever filmed or written. In a deeply personal and engaging programme David takes the viewer through three key questions: How and why did Darwin come up with his theory? Why do we think he was right? And why is it more important now than ever before?

To find the answers to these questions, he takes the viewer on a 200 year journey through Darwin’s life and subsequent scientific discoveries. David visits Darwin’s home, Cambridge — where Darwin studied — and returns to his own personal roots in Leicestershire (which boasts some of the oldest rocks in the world). He also uses excerpts from many other BBC programmes that he has made over the years, but it is in the last ten minutes that the programme really hits home. Using state-of-the-art graphics David narrates the complete history of life on Earth following the ‘tree of life’ concept first proposed by Charles Darwin. These ten minutes of television are so powerful that they should be shown in every school in the land.

Despite being deprived of the visual aids of High Definition TV, BBC Radio has also invested heavily in programmes that take the listener into the mind and world of Charles Darwin. Melvyn Bragg launched the radio season with ‘Darwin: In Our Time’, a four part documentary series. Here we are shown a boy who was ‘incapable of concentrating on anything’ (according to his headmaster), who was considered slower at learning than his younger sister and by his own admission was probably a ‘bad boy’. His memories of childhood were restricted to times of being locked-up in his room and going on long solitary walks. He grew into a young man who enjoyed shooting birds, but had a passion for collecting beetles. Bragg gives us a vivid picture of the ‘gentle police-state’ of the Cambridge that Darwin ended up at after literally running away from medical studies in Edinburgh. Like half of all students at that time, he was studying to become a priest. Cambridge is likened to Tehran in terms of the ecclesiastical power exercised by the college Fellows, all of whom had to renounce marriage. In order to graduate you had to sign the 39 articles of the Church of England. It was a world based upon the precepts that everything was held together by the Word of God and was stable — unchanging. It was here Darwin came to become a priest and left a biologist.

Bragg takes us out to the Cambridge Fens, where Darwin’s beetle obsession fuelled his interest in biology and his friendship with John Stevens Henslow. It was Henslow who would recommend the 22-year-old Darwin for a place on HMS Beagle.

Ruth Padel, Darwin’s great-great-great granddaughter (although, as she points out, she is one of 87), looks closer at Darwin’s personal life in the Radio 4 series, ‘Darwin: My Ancestor’. Here the listener is taken through Darwin’s emotional journey, his sense of wonder, his relationship with his wife and family, how he was deeply affected by the death of his mother and daughter and how he became a successful writer. Again the medium of radio enables a deeply introspective approach to Charles Darwin, and at the same time uses experts, readings from Darwin’s own diaries and letters, music and poetry to evoke his world and life.

To cover all of the BBC programmes would take more space than is available here. This is an epic undertaking by the BBC which spans an entire year of scheduling. Still to come are several major series by Andrew Marr, David Attenborough and Jimmy Doherty. One particular series that caught my eye at the preview is ‘The Incredible Journey’ presented by Dr Alice Roberts. This looks to be a huge five-part odyssey that traces humanity’s journey out of Africa and across the world.

Darwin’s Lost World: The Hidden History of Animal Life by Martin Brazier is a series of epic journeys itself, both by the author across the world and for the reader into the deep time of 1000 million years ago. There is something of Indiana Jones about Martin Brazier. He is a professor of Palaeobiology at Oxford University, and his focus is on the very earliest signs of life on Earth. And yet he also takes us from fighting pirates off Cuba to the depths of a decaying Soviet Union, Outer Mongolia, Ancient Buddhist Temples and Communist China. We learn about the perils of Tarantulas in your underpants, ‘Cadaver and Chips’, and death-defying helicopter rides to the ends of the planet. In one particularly eerie episode he visits a world-famous museum that no one visits because the failing Soviet system cannot afford the electricity to light it. He wanders the dinosaur exhibits in darkness, alone except for the armed guard at his side.

Yet this is also a book of great intellectual vigour. The journeys above attempt to link his purpose to answer Darwin’s great dilemma, which is the sudden absence of fossils before the Cambrian explosion around 542 million years ago. This meant that on a planet that reaches back nearly 5000 million years there was only evidence for life — from trilobites, through dinosaurs and ape men — in essentially a footnote to Earth’s history. In 1859, and until the last few decades, there was an absence of links to the simplest forms of life that were necessary to begin and transmit the evolutionary process.

Brazier’s book demonstrates how these fossils did indeed exist, and how they were discovered, argued about, mistaken, competed over. (The ‘Mofaotyof Principle’ comes into play here between rival palaeontologists, as Brazier comically explains: My Oldest Fossils Are Older Than Your Oldest Fossils.) He takes us into deep time and engages us with complex processes through shape poems and similar mnemonics. Despite his globe-trotting he takes us to the oldest rocks in the world — in Scotland — and introduces the geological concepts of upside-down mountains. He shows us a world where no modern life could exist — humans would need spacesuits to avoid the poisonous air and the only edible vegetables (seaweed) would be saturated with arsenic. It is a world transformed by worms and the evolutionary process.

This is a superbly readable book. Martin Brazier carries us along with his enthusiasm and humour so that his scientific investigations into the origins of life become a real adventure.