By Jonathan Bellot:

One afternoon in June of 1860, upon hearing Charles Darwin’s suggestion that humans may have descended from apes, the wife of the Bishop of Worcester is famously supposed to have exclaimed, “My dear, descended from the apes! Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.”

Darwin had published his famous work on the mechanism of evolution, On the Origin of Species, the year before, and debates and arguments had begun almost the moment the book appeared. It is likely Darwin realized his book would be controversial. After all, contrary to what most people suppose, he didn’t actually do more than hint at the possibility that humans were part of this evolutionary process in On the Origin of Species. 

It wasn’t until 1871, when he published another deeply controversial text, The Descent of Man, that his views on human evolution became explicit. Nonetheless, many a debate had happened in the years between, and Victorian England, like much of Europe and America on hearing about Darwin’s theory, found itself divided into two camps: those who found evolution plausible and those who either did not find it plausible or -- more likely -- did not think evolution could fit in with their religious views.

After all, the latter group asked, if humans evolved over millions of years and shared a common ancestor with the great apes, how could a god have created Adam and Eve? Was that not a flagrant violation of the book of Genesis? Did God simply “stop” evolution -- if it had indeed occurred -- at some point and imbue a primate with a soul? Or was the Adam and Eve story just that -- a story that, for the first time, could be demonstrably proven impossible? 

These questions came at a time when more and more dinosaur bones and entire skeletons were being discovered, and similar debates were raging on about what had happened to those mysterious giants. One of the most extraordinary proposals came from a man called Philip Henry Gosse, who suggested in a book called Omphalos that God had put the bones in the dirt to trick those who were too curious. There were also many debates going on about the universe. How big was it? How old was it? Was there life on other planets, just like on Earth?

All of these arguments coincided, at some point, with Darwin’s theory.

The mere fact that these debates existed at all was testament to how well Darwin thought out and provided evidence for his theory. And it is often forgotten that Darwin did not come up with this theory in a vacuum. Not only were there theories resembling evolution in circulation over a century before Darwin (such as those of Lamarck), but there was also another man, Alfred Russell Wallace, who came up with a theory strikingly similar to Darwin’s at almost the same time. 

Wallace corresponded with Darwin, and he sent Darwin his own theory of natural selection in 1858; to Darwin’s shock, Wallace’s theory was virtually the same as his own. It was, in fact, fear that Wallace would take credit for the idea that led Darwin to publish his work first, since he had put it away indefinitely before learning of Wallace.

But it is worth being aware that, had Darwin not published one of the world’s most famous and controversial texts, someone else would have. The theory of evolution, being a scientific theory, has nothing to do with Darwin except for his having first published a relatively comprehensive account of it. And, because we have learnt a lot since 1859 -- much of which Darwin himself would never know -- it is now clear to over 99% of biologists today, as well as many an intellectuals in many a field, that evolution is the best theory we have to explain how life moved from very simple organisms to very complex ones, over great periods of time. 

While a lot of what is in Darwin’s books was correct, a number of his ideas have been revised as we have learnt more. We have much more fossil evidence than Darwin did (or can examine the fossils with more advanced technology), including such spectacular creatures as the Archaeopteryx (a creature that is a dinosaur with clear birdlike characteristics) and the fossils of the Burgess Shale; we have evidence of creatures who have gradually almost lost features they once had, like the vestigial tail in humans you can see in our skeletons, and the legs you can see in the skeletons of both whales and snakes; we have the fact that viruses evolve (and often make the news for it), forcing us to continually develop new vaccines; and, above all, we have learnt that all organisms are genetically connected. Put human genes into a fruit fly, and the fly will use those genes as if they were a fly’s. Compare our genes to a chimpanzee’s, and they are almost the same. We are more different from each other, really, than we are from a chimpanzee, genetically speaking.

So why is there such a big argument nowadays over evolution?

Technically, there isn’t really an argument in the Caribbean -- in large part because the majority of Caribbean people are creationists and have either never learnt about evolution or have simply rejected it out of dislike or disinterest. February 12 is Darwin Day -- the day Darwin was born, and a day many a scientist and secularist celebrate. Let’s say on that day, you go up and ask the average person on the street about Darwin’s theory. They might know it was evolution, but beyond that, who knows what you’ll hear.

This needs to change.

One step towards becoming a more advanced society -- and no one but the naïve or the medieval-minded would argue that we have steps to take -- is that people become aware of the world around them. This does not only mean watching or reading the news. This means knowing about important historical events. It means having a smart, cultured answer to some of our most enduring and important questions: Who are we? How did we get here? Where is here, anyway? Why am I here? And that answer is not one you memorize; it is one you continually revise and redevelop as you learn more, explore more, contact more people from more backgrounds.

There are many facets of such questions. Evolution is but one of them -- though it may be one of the most important. It is worth understanding that the Earth has been shown to be 4.6 billion years old and that the universe itself is currently estimated at 13.72 billion years old. 

It is worth knowing that our solar system -- the sun and the planets surrounding it -- is but one of thousands within the Milky Way Galaxy, and that our home galaxy is one of billions of similar galaxies, each likely containing planets and suns just like our own. 

It is worth knowing that space is so vast, and our planet so tiny, that we will likely never travel outside of our solar system in a spaceship -- much less to anywhere else out there. 

It is worth knowing that the universe is expanding -- making us even tinier than before.

It is worth knowing that 99% of life that has ever been known to exist on Earth is extinct today -- and that the life forms we can only see under a microscope were the first to be here and will still be here long after we have gone, since it is the microbes which truly rule the world, when you stop to think about it. Pick up a handful of dirt, and you may be holding more little organisms than human beings alive today.

It is worth knowing, too, how the religions we hold so dear were given to us, how some of us may never have even heard of a Jesus or a Mohammed if we had remained all our lives in Africa. It is unlikely, of course, since colonialism has left many parts of Africa intensely religious -- and yet there are still peoples there, as there are tribes across the world, who know nothing of our religions. Give that a thought. Are those peoples worse off? Or are their own belief systems just as valid as our own, since none of us knows the absolute answers to life’s questions, at the end of the day? Why are so many of us so arrogant as to believe that religions given to us by missionaries centuries ago are correct?

Whether or not you are religious, it is a step in the right direction to accept that evolution is the best theory science has for how life went from simple to complex. It is not a theory of how life began from non-life. (That would be an entirely separate idea known as abiogenesis, an idea not currently supported by nearly as much evidence as evolution -- though that does not make it wrong, of course.) 

And once we accept that we are indeed animals, intimately related to the other animals around us, doesn’t that make you stop and think about so much else? What does it mean to be a primate who has evolved so far beyond other organisms? Do we mean less than we do if we ignore that we are animals?

Do we mean more?

Does it matter, if it is true?

And that’s the final point: the truth. Even if the truth may not always be pretty, I would rather accept what is most likely true than hide behind something that comforts me with false hope or a false sense of superiority. I love imagining things -- I am a writer of fiction, after all -- but I am well-aware of the difference between what I dream up and what is most likely the truth. And once we accept that there is much we do not know, once we let go of what we only believe in, and once we step forward and examine what we do know -- well, I’m willing to believe we will ultimately be the better for it. At the very least, we will be more honest with ourselves. 

Of course, those who do not really think much about things like evolution now will not necessarily benefit from learning or not learning about it. But those of us who want to know things, and those of us struggling with the questions of who we are and what it all means, would do well to begin -- or get to soon -- the strange, wonderful, and redefining theory a brave man put into words over a century and a half ago.

We are an evolving set of islands, the Caribbean. If we take the step to educate ourselves and others on the big issues and ideas so often ignored or underemphasized in the region, we will be taking a step in a direction that can do us nothing but good. Let us take that step, and let us remember, along the way, the brave steps Darwin himself took, steps that would have profound effects on the world. Let us become the best people we can be.

Jonathan Bellot is pursuing his MFA in Fiction at Florida State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Transnational Literature, BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, Belletrist Coterie, Black Lantern Publishing, and The New Humanism. He was born in 1987 in Cincinnati, Ohio to Dominican parents, and has lived since nine in the Commonwealth of Dominica.

February 15, 2012

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