Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy of Death, Disease, Depravit -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (464)	5/3/2016 10:29:34 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1308

.. “Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s Greatest Secret.”Sutton’s allegations are explosive. He claims to have found irrefutable proof that neither Darwin nor Alfred Russel Wallace deserves the credit for the theory of natural selection, but rather that they stole the idea — consciously or not — from a wealthy Scotsman and forest-management expert named Patrick Matthew. “I think both Darwin and Wallace were at the very least sloppy,” he told me. Elsewhere he’s been somewhat less diplomatic: “In my opinion Charles Darwin committed the greatest known science fraud in history by plagiarizing Matthew’s” hypothesis, he told the Telegraph. “Let’s face the painful facts,” Sutton also wrote. “Darwin was a liar. Plain and simple.” Some context: The Patrick Matthew story isn’t new. Matthew produced a volume in the early 1830s, “On Naval Timber and Arboriculture,” that indeed contained an outline of the famous theory in a slim appendix. In a contemporary review, the noted naturalist John Loudon seemed ill-prepared to accept the forward-thinking theory. He called it a “puzzling” account of the “origin of species and varieties” that may or may not be original. In 1860, several months after publication of “On the Origin of Species,” Matthew would surface to complain that Darwin — now quite famous for what was described as a discovery born of “20 years’ investigation and reflection” — had stolen his ideas. Darwin, in reply, conceded that “Mr. Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under the name of natural selection.” But then he added, “I think that no one will feel surprised that neither I, nor apparently any other naturalist, had heard of Mr. Matthew’s views.” That statement, suggesting that Matthew’s theory was ignored — and hinting that its importance may not even have been quite understood by Matthew himself — has gone unchallenged, Sutton says. It has, in fact, become a supermyth, cited to explain that even big ideas amount to nothing when they aren’t framed by proper genius. Sutton thinks that story has it wrong, that natural selection wasn’t an idea in need of a “great man” to propagate it. After all his months of research, Sutton says he found clear evidence that Matthew’s work did not go unread. No fewer than seven naturalists cited the book, including three in what Sutton calls Darwin’s “inner circle.” He also claims to have discovered particular turns of phrase — “Matthewisms” — that recur suspiciously in Darwin’s writing. In light of these discoveries, Sutton considers the case all but closed. He’s challenged Darwin scholars to debates, picked fights with famous skeptics such as Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins, and even written letters to the Royal Society, demanding that Matthew be given priority over Darwin. ..... fivethirtyeight.com I'll have to remember this.