Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X: New Light on the Evolutionists

by Loren Eiseley

Illustrated with photos.

Genres: History, Science

278 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1979

About the author

Loren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.

Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.

Reviews

[Mike Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book in the story of the history of natural selection.

One of the most frequently cited discoveries that is conveyed in its pages (pp 72-73) is Eiseley's unique discovery that Darwin (1844) - in a private and unpublished essay - replicated Patrick Matthew's (1831) unique Artificial versus Natural Selection analogy of differences. In that essay, to which Eiseley directs us, he shows hus that Darwin even replicated the precise example Matthew used of the differences between plants raised in nurseries and those selected by nature in the wild. Eiseley then notes that Darwin cited that example as Matthew's in his 1868 book The Descent of Man - but only because Matthew had claimed priority for his theory in the press in 1860.
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Eiseley concluded that this was too great to be a coincidence and that Darwin had lied when he claimed no prior-knowledge of Matthew's book - which contains the full hypothesis of natural selection

What Eisely missed, however was that professor David Low - Matthew's Perth Academy schoolmate - had twice been first to second use unique "Matthewisms" in his books - which Darwin read. And in his 1834 book Low also replicated Matthew's great and original explanatory analogy.

What Eiseley also missed was that in the Origin of Species Darwin (1859) also replicated Matthew's analogy of differences - only that time he used different examples to explain it.

What is so important about Eiseley's book is that by uncovering what he did in the literature, he enabled us to see further than what Darwin wrote about his so-called "independent discovery" of a prior-published theory to find a purer form of truth in the history of the discovery of natural selection. .

Ths is a classic book for anyone interested in the history of the discovery of natural selection. I highly recommend it to you for your personal library.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

My capstone in college was a class on the history of the theory of evolution, yet I had never heard of Edward Blyth (the mysterious Mr. X). This is Eiseley's argument that he was an unacknowledged giant upon whose shoulders Darwin stood to reach his conclusion on natural selection. It's an interesting read for a niche audience, but I didn't get that heady feeling I typically do when reading anthropology's poet laureate (in fact, a large portion of the book isn't even by Eiseley. It is instead given over to reprinting Blyth's own essays) until the concluding essays.

[Michael Norwitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eiseley is a clear and eloquent writer, and I recommend this book highly. It's a fine short biography of Darwin, but primarily a history of the intellectual predecessors of Charles Darwin, particularly Edward Blyth (who was unknown to me prior to reading this), and including Wallace and Lyell, and the intellectual milieu in which the pioneering evolutionist operated.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loren Eiseley is my favourite science writer, and as I worked my way through this book I was initially a little disappointed. I read him for his images and language, and yet half the book isn't by him at all! But as I read, my expectations began to readjust.

Eiseley takes a detailed look here at the influence of the zoologist Edward Blyth on Darwin's theory of evolution. I'd never even heard of Blyth, but the evidence is convincing: Darwin had heard of him, and used his work as a (pretty much unacknowledged) stepping stone in the development of his own. A large section of this book is therefore given over to reprinting three of Blyth's papers (also his eventual obituary by a contemporary). These were interesting reads, even if they don't reach Eiseley's level of science writing - but what does? And there was plenty of Eiseley to content me, especially in his concluding essays on the place of man in evolutionary thought.

Informative, well-researched, and absolutely worth the read.