Darwin's Style

I had never read any of Darwin’s works before last week, and I am not sure what I expected to encounter when I picked up Origins for last Thursday’s discussion. I suppose that I assumed that the pages would contain long-winded tracts on the struggle between species, Darwin’s experience with the animals of the Galapagos islands, and perhaps an appearance or two of the phrase “survival of the fittest” (after all, these are the principles of evolutionary theory that we were taught in high school biology and history courses).

I was pleasantly surprised that reading Darwin was a completely different experience for me than I expected. I believe that my enjoyment of the work comes almost entirely from the style Darwin employs, a style that I have not encountered in scientific works by other authors. The elements of Darwin’s style that most surprised me are ones that contradict my preconception of how a scientist presents himself and his work to the world. There are elements to Darwin’s style and presentation of his theory in Origins which I believe are crucial to how Darwin wanted his work to be read and received by the public. First, Darwin presents himself passively (almost as a subject the “facts” he is presented acted upon), but is assertive in his expertise. Second, Darwin invites the reader into his presentation of these “facts” through his use of personal experiences and his repetition of the word “we.” Finally, Darwin introduces a visual motif of seeing or observing these facts, and presents his evidence as apparent to even the most unscientific of readers.

Moving directly from Audubon’s writings to Darwin’s writings, I was struck by the passivity of Darwin’s introduction in contrast to the sometimes overassertive (and sometimes simply egotistical) style Audubon employed in his writings. As we discussed on Thursday, in the first paragraph of Darwin’s introduction he presents himself more as a subject who was acted upon by the undeniable facts of his theory, rather than as an individual who, through brilliancy exceeding that of his contemporaries, “discovered” a mysterious truth that nature had hidden away from mankind.

Turning to the exact language Darwin employs, his first encounter is not described in terms of discovery. Rather, he describes how, as a naturalist aboard the Beagle, he was “much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent” (11). But this moment on the Beagle does not lead to a sudden moment of realization. He remarked that he thought that these facts “seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species,” but it was not until he returned home from his voyage in 1837 that it occurred to him that “something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it” (11). The end of this paragraph, as we remarked in class, presents Darwin as quietly confident in his work and establishes him as an expert on the subject, someone who has “steadily pursued the same object” from 1837 to the publication of Origins, which he admits, is only an abstract of the longer work that he plans to publish. He gives these details to establish that it is only “after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment” (15) that he would even attempt to present these facts to the public, and his that his presentation of personal facts with his own observations are meant “to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision” (11).

This invitation into his own mind and experiences that Darwin extends to his reader by “entering on these personal details” establishes a stylistic feature of Darwin’s writing in Origins. His repetitive use of the word “we” in place of another word choice such as “I” or “naturalists” includes the average reader in his discussion of the facts and the conclusions that can be drawn from his own observations and the observations and studies of many others. I reviewed our readings from Thursday and for Tuesday—the introduction and the first three chapters—and did an electronic search for the word “we.” In just this small selection from the larger work, “we” appeared 162 times: 7 times in the introduction, 63 times in chapter one, 26 times in chapter 2, and 66 times in chapter 3. Darwin’s use of “we” is indicative of his effort in appealing to the reader’s power of discernment and actively engaging his reader in the laying out, as it were, of all the facts, in order to reach a conclusion. Of course, in the end, the conclusion Darwin wants to reach is the conclusion the reader gets, whether or not he or she actually followed Darwin’s explanation of the evidence or agreed with what Darwin was arguing. However the “we approach,” as I am calling this element of Darwin’s style, is more engaging than an individual account of discoveries and conclusions that are presented as an “I did this, then I thought this, then I concluded this.” Although in reality, the observations, discussion, and conclusion of the scientist or author is occurring independently of any reader, the style of the “we approach” to present an argument gives the reader the illusion of an active participation.

Another element of Darwin’s style that evokes the reader’s participation in the narrative is his emphasis on seeing and showing. Darwin uses “see” and “show,” or variations of these words, most often in pairings with the word “we.” In the introduction is Darwin’s first use of this stylistic structure. On page thirteen, he introduces a theory held by naturalists against which he argues, by an application to observations made of common species and to an understanding of modification and coadaptation: “Naturalists continually refer to external conditions…as the only possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true” (my emphases). Immediately following this sentence, Darwin gives the reader two specific examples, those of the woodpecker and mistletoe, which prove that external conditions are not the only cause of variation (13). Again and again, Darwin invites the reader to “see” what he sees, repeats what “we have seen” or “what has been seen,” or promises the reader evidence that “we shall see hereafter.”

I am looking forward to reading the rest of Origins. I enjoy the style of writing Darwin employs, and I wonder what observations he will use to argue for his theory.