For the past few months I have been
following Darwin's voyage on the Beagle
through the daily entries in his personal diary and field notebooks – trying to
get to know him as a person and relive his first encounters with the natural
environment of the New World.
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| Down House/English Heritage recreation of Charles Darwin at work in his cabin. Photo Lisa Taylor |
Among
other things, I have come to the conclusion that being a naturalist may be a lost
art and, more importantly, that the world needs naturalists like Charles Darwin
more then ever before. And although having more full-fledged, full-time
naturalists would be ideal, I think it would benefit all scientists to have a
certain degree of training as a naturalist. Why, you might ask? Well, because naturalists are a particularly
unique type of field scientist that can (1) make good observations, (2)
integrate many different fields of study, and (3) share their discoveries by
writing about the natural world. Let me elaborate.
First – as others have noted, Darwin was a
fantastic observer of the natural world, a skill that is particularly well
honed in any good naturalist. Observations are the cornerstone of good science
(along with good questions, as Rachel Slatyer noted in an earlier blog). They are the
foundation of good interpretations – so if the observations are bad, the
hypotheses are meaningless. Placing a
scientist in an explored region with only a pen and paper requires them to
really think about how to observe and how to use descriptive writing to paint a
picture. I like to emphasize this with
my students and really try to have them describe things in as much detail as
possible.
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| Some of Darwin's finch sketches, reproduced in the beautiful blog Venetian Red, wherein two artists turn the tables and explore ideas through art. |
Second – naturalists have the ability to
synthesise many different disciplines. The 20th century saw
scientists become more and more specialized.
Today, for example, there are biologists who specialize in the A-G-C's
of genetics without ever examining a "living" organism. Many of the
global environmental issues of today require us to take a much more
interdisciplinary look at a problem if we ever hope to come to a solution.
In this regard Darwin was a exceptional
naturalist. Don't get me wrong - he made mistakes (which is OK in science) - but I never cease to be amazed at the range
of subjects Darwin wrote about during his travels. Geology, of course, was a
central theme, as are biology and ecology, but he also hypothesised about
meteorology, astronomy, oceanography, chemistry, and many other subfields of
science. His attention to detail meant that his hypotheses were often on the
mark.
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| St Paul's Rocks today - still not a typical ocean island. Photo John Vergari, Wikimedia Commons |
One example of this came in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean where he recognised that St. Paul's Rocks was not
typical ocean island but instead was made of the rare rock serpentinite (which
we now know is a piece of the mantle). This is amazing considering that he was
a 23-yr old with just a few months of formal training in geology (via Adam
Sedgwick).
Third – a true naturalist is more than a
scientist (and I mean that not as an insult to scientists J). They are writers and often poets or artists, and have the ability to share the
wonder of nature with the rest of the world. Ed Abbey (not a scientist, but a
good observer in his own right) once wrote:
"Any good
poet, in our age at least, must begin with the scientific view of the world;
and any scientist worth listening to must be something of a poet, must possess
the ability to communicate to the rest of us the sense of love and wonder at
what his work discovers."
(from Abbey's essay Come on In, excerpted by Ranger Kathryn Burke of Arches National Park, a geological wonderland Darwin might have loved)
Darwin had this skill, too. I'm only about five months into his
diary/journals (I'm trying not to read ahead so that I can relive the trip in
real time) and I can already appreciate Darwin's poetic writing style, and his
ability to infuse his excitement into his words. Take, for example, his first
impression of he New World Forest upon arriving in Brazil in February 1832:
“The delight one
experiences in such times bewilders the mind. —if the eye attempts to follow
the flight of a gaudy butter-fly, it is arrested by some strange tree or fruit;
if watching an insect one forgets it in the stranger flower it is crawling
over. — if turning to admire the splendour of the scenery, the individual
character of the foreground fixes the attention. The mind is a chaos of
delight, out of which a world of future & more quiet pleasure will arise. —
I am at present fit only to read Humboldt; he like another Sun illumines
everything I behold.”
(Darwin's Beagle Diary, 28 February 1832)
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| The Brazilian forest as Darwin experienced it, from a painting he cited. Forêt vierge du Brésil, Charles de Clarac |
So what does the HMS Beagle Project mean to me?
It is a chance to re-explore the world through the eyes of a naturalist
– absorbing the whole of nature and synthesizing the "natural
sciences" into something that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is
a chance to rekindle the role of the naturalist and train a new generation of
scientists to be able to observe, hypothesise and solve problems in a holistic
way. It is a chance to share the beauty
and splendour of the natural world through art and
poetry. When I think about how important
this trip was to Darwin, and the legacy it has left us, I can only wonder what
having another opportunity to explore the world via a 21st century Beagle could mean for the future. I hope some day to know the answer.
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This reproduction of Darwin's Tree of Life diagram is from a Levittown, PA high school biology website, worth a visit in itself to see how dedicated teachers are getting science across to young people.
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As a newcomer to the project, I'm curious
to know - what does the HMS Beagle Project mean to you?
