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Darwin's children drew all over the “On the Origin of Species” manuscript (2014)
- impish9208 1y agoMy favorite Darwin fun fact is his detailed pros and cons list on whether to get married. https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-and-cons-of-marriage/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-a...
- libraryofbabel 1y ago“better than a dog anyhow”
- fullstop 1y agoDarwin was a real catch. It always blows my mind how many people, historically, married their cousins. I guess smaller towns had shallower gene pools.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoEveryone who marries marries their cousin, it's just a matter of degree. Before the advent of the automobile, people traveled a lot less. Even more so as you go further back. Combine that with families having a lot more kids (you might have 36-64 surviving first cousins), and you've got a situation where nearly everyone you interact with might well be only a couple degrees of separation by blood. Marriage between first cousins has historically been a bit taboo, but so called third and fourth degree (aunts and uncles, first cousins) marriages were still pretty common. It wasn't really until the rise of the eugenics movement that the modern taboos and legal prohibitions were established. I've been doing a fair bit of genealogy lately, and you can see on the family tree pretty clearly when people moved from from smaller, insulated communities to larger cities. Above that point, the tree fans out a lot less.
- fullstop 1y ago> Everyone who marries marries their cousin, it's just a matter of degree. Right, clearly I meant close (1st and 2nd) cousins. At the end of the day, we are all related, but that's kind of a technicality.
- mr_toad 1y agoAlso royalty. The instability of some European monarchs has been attributed to inbreeding.
- trompetenaccoun 1y agoBrits are well-known romantics even today but 19th century society was on a whole different level.
- Epa095 1y agoWell, this hit harder than I thought it would My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do.
- ty6853 1y agoIn those those days though I'm not sure the calculus of working for the sake of the children was quite the same. You might have kids, and then they work the farm, then you manage the farm and slowly the children take over the manual labor and hard work of it. In old age the investment in the children pays off and a reciprocal relationship is formed where you take care of the grandchildren and your own children take care of you. Now that is flipped on its head. The parent makes the lions share of the investment in the child, but the benefits of the child is largely socialized. Want daycare, food, recreational, extra-cirricular activities -- basically anything other than public schooling you pay taxes for already? Go fuck yourself. But once the children is grown up, well well well we are a society here! Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children. And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard -- it is only morally right when all of society does the exact same thing to the kid. There is every possible incentive in today's society to encourage others to have kids, ensuring your own retirement, but to reneg on doing it yourself because some other poor bastard can front most the costs and then you can tax the shit out of the kid for your retirement / social benefits. I think children were a rational decision in Darwin's day, now they are definitely not, because you are on the sucker end of a tragedy of the commons deal.
- 369548684892826 1y agoNone of this applies to Darwin though, he was wealthy and didn't need to think about "working the farm".
- lukan 1y agoBut apparently he needed to think about having to work for income to sustain a family.
- jkingsman 1y agoFor such a giant of the scientific community, he was after all human. My two favorite journal entries: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything." "I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything."
- rolisz 1y agoHuh, I feel much closer to Darwin now
- moffkalast 1y ago"I cannot brain today, I have the dumb" Me too Charles, me too.
- pfdietz 1y agoHe had chronic nausea (possibly abdominal migraine), so I'm not surprised he was feeling poorly.
- zabzonk 1y ago"I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before"
- boringg 1y agoChildren — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — """but terrible loss of time. —""" !!!! So ruthless in his calculus. One wonders if he was on the spectrum?
- mdp2021 1y ago> calculus It is calculus, it is performed like calculus - it has to.
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- qoez 1y agoI could have sworn that was Ben Franklin that wrote that
- mdp2021 1y agoBoth Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin are quoted in informal Decision Theory. Both used pro-vs-cons tables to orient decision; Franklin also used weights. > When those difficult cases occur, they are difficult, chiefly because while we have them under consideration, all the reasons pro and con are not present to the mind at the same time; but sometimes some set present themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of sight. Hence the various purposes or inclinations that alternately prevail, and the uncertainty that perplexes us. // To get over this, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con. Then during three or four days consideration, I put down under the different heads short hits of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against the measure. // When I have thus got them all together in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to two reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two reasons con, equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies, and if, after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly
- Gormo 1y agoThe article makes no mention of the name "Babbage" in Emma's diary. Could that relate to Charles Babbage, who was a contemporary?
- squeedles 1y agoI'm wondering about Wednesday April 15, 1840 -- "Much flatulence" Sometimes history provides too much information to future generations.
- criddell 1y agoIt's TMI only because he lived for a long time after. If he had died on April 16th, it might point to some type of illness or mariticide.
- rsynnott 1y agoOh, if you think that's bad, see Samuel Pepy's diary (conveniently syndicated in realtime here: https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social; think they're on the third run through, currently doing 1662). No detail of everyday life, no matter how objectionable, left uncovered.
- seabass-labrax 1y ago> syndicated in realtime here: https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social That really is wonderful! Reading how Pepys arranged for his diary to be preserved makes me think that he would have enjoyed this more modern presentation. > Found out my uncle Wight and Mr. Rawlinson, and with them went to the latter’s house to dinner, and there had a good dinner of cold meat and good wine, but was troubled in my head after the little wine I drank. "Troubled in the head" is a euphemism due a revival!
- rsynnott 1y ago> Reading how Pepys arranged for his diary to be preserved makes me think that he would have enjoyed this more modern presentation. I mean, he might not be too happy about the faux-Spanish bits, in which he wrote about his many affairs and other bad behaviour, being decoded... It's a lot of fun, though, and the comments are usually quite good.
- behnamoh 1y agoThis is one of the few things children still do even centuries later. In many aspects, we have changed so drastically that I think 100-year-ago people would find us weird and unsociable.
- rayiner 1y agoNot at all. Young children, in particular, do the same things they’ve been doing since modern humans evolved, if not even earlier than that. My three and six year old boys wake up in the morning and pretend to be puppies. I’m sure kids their age were doing that 30,000 years ago when humans domesticated dogs. They were playing tic tac toe the other day, and asked my dad whether he played tic tac toe when he was a kid. My dad—who grew up in a village in Bangladesh—explained that he did, except they drew the game in the dirt with sticks.
- nkrisc 1y agoRelevant only by virtue of also being about historical children’s drawings, but it reminds of another example of a child’s drawings preserved for us to see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim > … Onfim, was a boy who lived in Novgorod (now Veliky Novgorod, Russia) in the 13th century, some time around 1220 or 1260. He left his notes and homework exercises scratched in soft birch bark, which was preserved in the clay soil of Novgorod. I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
- brcmthrowaway 1y agothis is insane. 6 year olds 800 years ago went to school ?
- drysine 1y agoIt's not clear how old he was.
- seertaak 1y agoOne of the drawings had the inscription 'I am a wild beast' -- that's 5-7 year old territory. Ofc it's possible that I'm missing some cultural nuance, but the picture is consistent with precocious-little-kid-with-visceral-imagination. He must have been a joy to parent!
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- vik0 1y agoI am a wild beast I am not in the 5-7 year old territory
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- andrewstuart 1y agoMy brothers and I and all our friends were allowed to draw on the walls when we were kids as long as it was in our bedrooms. My friends thought it was the coolest thing ever. We painted it over when we got older.
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- ykonstant 1y ago"If I catch you rascals, I will give you the Darwin award in fine arts!"
- quirk 1y agoCurious if anyone reading this has explored the alternative theories to Darwinian evolution. I only recently started looking at it, so don't want to share links because I don't know what is believable. But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about. He considered Origin of Species an abstract, and was promising the full "big book" for the rest of his life, but never was able to pull it together.
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- amilios 1y agoCan you elaborate on this? My understanding is that evolution (to be precise, we're presumably referring to natural selection) has been proven again and again and that there is a clear scientific consensus around it, and I'm not familiar with any particular large gaps in the theory.
- glacier5674 1y agoI'm guessing it's passages like this one regarding transitional forms: Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
- ceejayoz 1y agoFun fact: Archaeopteryx - a transitional fossil between dinosaurs and birds - was discovered two years after Origin of Species.
- ceejayoz 1y ago> But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about. Sure. He recognized the importance of inheritance, but didn't know the mechanism. We've learned a lot since Darwin's days about how it all works - genetics, in particular - but the basic concept has held up just fine. We can even demonstrate it in lab conditions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...
- cjs_ac 1y agoRoyal Armouries Ms. I.33[0] was also used for colouring practice by children, e.g., in folii 2r - 8v as shown on Wiktenauer[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armouries_Ms._I.33 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armouries_Ms._I.33 [1] https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Walpurgis_Fechtbuch_(MS_I.33) https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Walpurgis_Fechtbuch_(MS_I.33)
- casey2 1y agoThe other story here is incremental growth of camera technology. The daguerreotype came out after his voyage on the HMS Beagle, by the time Origin of Specices was published (with no photography) Cameras still had to many practical limitations to justify a worse image. By 1872 Darwin would publish a book full of photography despite his remarkable drawing skills. Something gives me the feeling that a lot of people are going to follow Darwin's example in the near future
- anon291 1y agoPeople talk about how hard it is to have kids these days without realizing that this sort of chaos was normal for the vast majority of humans throughout history and they still achieved great things. Part of it is the expectation of others. So what if your kids color your book, interrupt your meetings, or cause embarrassment in front of your boss. They need to get over it. Like him or hate, the fact that the Vice President takes his kids everywhere is a good reminder of how un-child-friendly our societies have become. It's almost transgressive to exist with children these days.
- mymacbook 1y agoLoved this! I took my child to work even when it wasn’t the specific holiday so she could see what a real exec review looked like or how boring work could seem to be. The experiment is still running, so I can’t tell you the outcome... yet! ;)
- s3r3nity 1y agoThis reminds me of the fascinating story of how Shakespeare's first folio was assembled, in that many of the plays were assembled from folks who had copies that were annotated - either as reading notes or with random family musings like todo lists. I highly recommend the Chris Laoutaris' book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Book-Behind-Making-Shakespeare/dp/1639363262 https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Book-Behind-Making-Shake...
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- neuroelectron 1y agoI guess he figured it out after all that.
- soheil 1y ago"from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Apparently less so in the case of his offspring.
- RKFADU_UOFCCLEL 1y agoThis is a good snapshot and piece of history of a mindsets freshly tuned into a new way of thinking. Thanks for this, this article was a relaxing break in these politically tense times.