Matthew's Hypothesis


Matthew originated the concept of Natural Selection in 1831 to explain the emergence and extinction of species between and after geological catastrophic events. He uniquely named it "the natural process of selection", which he described as a fundamental law of nature. He discussed divergence in terms of diverging ramifications, the mutability of species, rejected miraculous birth of new species following catastrophes, held to a steady state in nature interrupted by catastrophes, understood the importance of the complex multi-level phenomenon of power of occupancy and ecological niches, rejected simple development from nearly-allied species in favour of descent from common ancestor, recognized what constituted a species, recognized the difference between domestic and wild species and saw artificial selection as the key to both discovering and explaining the process of matural selection.


Matthew's Essential Hypothesis



From (Sutton 2014 - Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret - currently not available due to actions of Kindle hacker e-book pirates. Paperback (vol 1) available: Here.



Matthew Invited Others to Test his Hypothesis


Matthew (1831, p. 386) wrote:


"In the first place, we ought to investigate its dependency upon the preceding links of the particular chain of life, variety being often merely types or approximations of former parentage; thence the variation of the family, as well as of the individual, must be embraced by our experiments.


Matthew's Hypothesis was more Veracious than Darwin's Uniformitarian Adaptation of it


As Jim Dempster first explained in great detail, and Rampino later popularised, Matthew's hypothesis was correct in that it incorporated the liklihood of natural geological and meteorological species extinction events. Darwin, from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward, slyly and subtly mocked Matthew as an ignorant biblical catastrophist. Any naturalist acceptance of the possibility of natural extinction events was something that was then out of fashion due to Darwin's great friend and mentor Charles Lyell's fallacious belief in uniformitarianism; namely, that if we can't observe something happening in our own lifetime then it never happened ever. Darwin believed in uniformitarism. Matthew never. Matthew, it turns out, was right.


Darwin Lied!


In his 1860 letter to the Gardener's Chronicle - laying claim to priority for his 1831 prior published hypothesis of natural selection - Matthew told Darwin that the famous botanist naturalist Loudon (a member of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society of Arts) read and then reviewed his book in 1832. Darwin knew Loudon's work, because his library has many heavily annotated copies and his notebooks show just how many of Loudon's books on trees he read. Yet Darwin replied on the pages of the Gardener's Chronicle that apparently no naturalist had read Matthew's ideas. More lies along these grounds followed from the third edition of the Orign of Species onward.


Until I wrote Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret, Darwin's lie, that no naturalist read Matthew's (1831) ideas before Matthew brought them to Darwin's attention in 1860, was universally accepted as veracious knowledge. In fact, I bust that 155 year old myth when I uniquely discovered that seven naturalists cited Matthew's 1831 book long before 1860, and that Darwin knew four of them and three (Loudon, Selby and Chambers) played major roles influencing and facilitating the pre-1858 work of Darwin and Wallace on natural selection!  Read more in my blog post - here. And more on the related concept of  knowledge contamination - here.


The Appendix Myth


Contrary to the Darwinian myth that Matthew hid his great discovery in an appendiix, in actual fact it  runs as a thead throughout the entire book. (Sutton 2014 - Nullius in Verba ):


'What Darwin succeeded in doing with his Appendix myth was to hoodwink those in the second half of the 19th century, and thereafter, to accept the perfectly plausible proposition that scientists would be less likely to find important work if it was hidden in an appendix. The premise of the argument being that  an appendix would be the last and least thing read in any book. However, the hard facts of reality are once again at odds with Darwin’s mythical excuses, because, as we know, Matthew’s hypotheses was not solely hidden in the appendix. Secondly, some of the most important parts of it were, however, concentrated there. Thirdly, to repeat the point already made, it was not actually unusual before the second half of the 19th century for heretical scientific ideas to be put into an appendix; being, no doubt, done for two handy reasons: that the problematic text could be easily removed by a publisher, book seller, library, or owner, if required by law - so the entire book need not be burned or banned; and that, if not banned, a reader could jump straight to the most important, radical and new ideas that the author wanted to share.'


Matthew's so called 'enunciation' of his discovery of Natural Selection was far more than an enunciation and, contrary to Darwin's lie and the subsequent Darwinist Appendix Myth, his ideas on what he coined 'the natural process of selection' were published in many parts of the main body  of his book.


Matthew was a Hanoverian laird and radical Chartist. On Naval Timber and Arboriculture was essentially a Trojan horse in which he used the subject of the economic botany of growing timber for the navy and to fuel the industrial revolution as a vehicle to snipe at political rivals such as Sir Henry Steuart of Allanton and  Sir Walter Scott. He mixed his political beliefs in with notions of natural selection to serve as a warning to the powerful classes to be more libertarian and to hail his own ancestral stock as the most superior variety of  humans.  In so doing he broke every code and convention of the Royal Society and British Association of Advancement of Science.



There can now be only one independent discoverer of natural selection


After the publication of ‘Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s greatest secret’ ’ we must evolve from the current official  Darwinist position that none read Matthew’s 1831 book  ‘On Naval Timber and Arboriculture’ to  incorporate the unique discovery that 52 more likely than not read it, 19 of whom were in Darwin’s and Wallace’s social circle, and that  seven naturalists actually cited it – three of whom were at the very epicenter of influence and facilitation of Darwin’s and Wallace’s pre-1858 published work on natural selection.


Matthew is the only person to fully discover the entire hypothesis of natural selection before Darwin and Wallace replicated it in 1858 and Darwin wrote the origin of Species in 1859.  Matthew described his discovery  both clearly and completely


Some Darwinists will seek to have you believe that either he did not – or that no one is sure whether or not Matthew (1831) did fully discover and clearly describe the full hypothesis of natural selection decades before Darwin and Wallace replicated it. They are most likely not lying but merely bullshitting in the sense described by Princeton University Professor Harry H. Frankfurt. Namely, they care not for whether or not what they tell you is right or wrong, because their sole concern is to win an argument by sounding plausible.


Those concerned with the truth of matter may wish to know the that the highly esteemed evolutionary expert William Hamilton wrote that Matthew’s 1831 description of natural selection was very clear. See: Hamilton, W. D. 2001. Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 2: Evolution of Sex. Oxford. Oxford University Press


The following list of scientists includes many expert biologists and every scientist in this list wrote that Matthew fully articulated the complete hypothesis of natural selection in 1831;


Calman, W. T. (1912) Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) The Journal of Botany. British and Foreign. pp. 193-194.


Calman, W. T. (1912a) Patrick Matthew of Gourdiehill, Naturalist. British Association, Dundee Meeting, 1912. Handbook. David Winter and Son. Dundee. P.451-457.


Cock, A. G. and Forsdyke, D. R. (2008). Treasure your Exceptions: The Science and Life of William Bateson. Springer.


Darwin, C. R. (1860) Natural selection. Gardeners' Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette no. 16 (21 April): 362-363.(This is Darwin’s letter in response to Matthew’s in the Gardeners Chronicle where Darwin also clearly claims that he had no prior knowledge of Matthew’s book). See Darwin online: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1705&viewtype=text&pageseq=1


Darwin, C. R. (1861) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (Third Edition) London. John Murray.


Dawkins, R. (2010). Darwin’s Five Bridges: The Way to Natural Selection In Bryson, B (ed.) Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society. London Harper Collins.


Dempster, W. J. (1983) Patrick Matthew and Natural Selection. Edinburgh. Paul Harris Publishing.


Dempster, W. J (1996) Evolutionary Concepts in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh. The Pentland Press.


Dempster, W. J. (2005) The Illustrious Hunter and the Darwins. Sussex. Book Guild Publishing.


Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1991). Darwin. London. Penguin Books.


Hallpike, C. R. (2008) How We Got Here: From Bows and Arrows to the Space Age. Author House. Milton Keynes.


Wainwright, M. (2008) Natural Selection: It’s Not Darwin’s (Or Wallace’s) Theory. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences 15 (1) 1-8 June, 2008.


Wainwright, M. (2011). Charles Darwin: Mycologist and Refuter of His Own Myth. FUNGI Volume 4:1 Winter. pp.13-20.


Wallace, A.R. (1879) Butler's "Evolution, Old and New" http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S311.htm


Zon, R. (1913) Darwinism in Forestry. The American Naturalist. Vol. 47. No. 561. September. pp.540-546

What was Written about Matthew's Unique Ideas Before Darwin Replicated them and then Claimed them as His Own "Independent Discovery"?

The answer is:  Quite a lot.  Here, I reveal just some of what what was written about them.


Writing in the third party, Matthew (1831), essentially admitted his heresy when he wrote:


"The very great interest of the question regarding species variety habit has perhaps led him a little too wide."


An anonymous savage review in the Edinburgh Literary Journal July 2nd 1831 reprinted those words and admonished Matthew for when the reviewer thought his speculation and misconception of facts led him into error.


An otherwise very positive review in The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine, disclaimed Matthew's idea of the natural process of selection (1831, p. 457):


 "In thus testifying our hearty approbation of the author, it is strictly in his capacity of a forest ranger, where he is original bold, and evidently experienced in all the arcana of the parentage, birth and education of trees. But we disclaim participation in his ruminations on the law of Nature, or on the outrages committed upon reason and justice by our burthens of hereditary nobility, entailed property, and insane enactments."


By way of block advertisement in the Quarterly Literary Advertiser (1831), Matthew's publishers Longman and Co and Adam Black of Edinburgh wrote:


"In embracing the Philosophy of Plants the interesting subject of Species and Variety is considered the principle of the natural Location of Vegetables is distinctly shown the principle also which in the untouched wild keeps unsteady Nature to her law inducing conformity in species and preventing deterioration of breed is explained  and the causes of the variation and deterioration of cultivated Forest Trees pointed out."


In 1832, the naturalist John Loudon reviewed Matthew's (1831) book and wrote - Loudon, J. C. (1832) Matthew Patrick On Naval Timber and Arboriculture with Critical Notes on Authors who have recently treated the Subject of Planting. Gardener's Magazine. Vol. VIII. p. 703)  :


 "One of the subjects discussed in this appendix is the puzzling one, of the origin of species; and varieties (and if the author has hereon originated no original views and of this we are far from certain), he has certainly exhibited his own in an original manner."


Loudon then went on to edit Edward Blyth's (1835 and 1836) papers on the varieties of species that are widely acknowledged to have significantly influenced Darwin before he penned in 1859 a book called The Orign of Species - which not only took for its famous title the same term Loudon used to describe what Matthew had done, Darwin also four-word-shuffled Matthew's unique term 'natural process of selection' into his own unique term 'process of natural selection', replicated Matthew's unique bombshell ideas on how new species emerged, replicated other unique terms coined by Matthew, replicated unique explanations such as Matthew's 'artificial versus natural selection analogy of differences', replicated examples of natural selection in nature from Matthew's book, and then - just like Alfred Wallace  (whose Sarawak paper was edited by Selby who had read and cited Matthew's book many years earlier) - Darwin claimed to have done so with no prior-knowledge of Matthew's book, which contained them all.  (See Nullius in Verba for the hard and fully referenced, indpendently verifiable, new evidence).


Clearly Darwin and Wallace, if they had no prior knowledge of Matthew's book. whilst surrounded by others who read and then cited it in the literature  - including Selby, Chambers and Loudon, who facilitated their work through editorship, hugely influenced them and influenced their major influences (such as Blyth) - must have miraculously immaculately conceived Patrick Matthew's discovery with the aid of some kind of divine cognitive contraceptive blessing from a supernatural force.


Darwinists believe in miracles. Moreover, they believe they have the divine right to beautify Darwin, the Great Replicator, and so award him priority over Matthew - the Originator. Like their namesake, Charles Darwin, Darwinists must, then, have been wonderfully blessed with incredible miraculous powers of cognitive contraception, because they have all the answers (Sutton 2015) for why Darwin's (1858/1859) replication of Matthew's (1831) prior-published discovery was delayed for over two decades by Darwin because it was a controversial, taboo, heretical, seditious, long-insufficiently evidenced hypothesis. Yet these same Darwinists, with exquisite hypocrisy, divinely decree that Matthew should have self-promoted his own hypothesis in order to be fully credited with it over the mere replicators - Darwin and Wallace. The pseudo-scholarly shame of it!


Find out the facts that have been buried for over 155 years


Don't let the dysology of the cult of Darwin live rent free in your head a moment longer! Find out the truth. Weigh the evidence. Then use your wonderful brain to decide for yourself. In order to do so you are advised to know what the New Evidence is, how it was found after all these years, and where it comes from. You can find it all in my book Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest Secret, which uniquely tells the full, and fully evidenced, story of the world's greatest science fraud.



Matthew's Hypothesis and Self-Serving Darwinist Dysology 

Following the self-serving rhetoric of Alfred Wallace, who wrote in his autobiography that Matthew failed to see the importance of his discovery because he never personally developed it further,  Richard Dawkins (2010) replicated the same "poor sucker never knew what he had" nonsense with his "wouldn't he have trumpeted it from the rooftops if he understood its importance" rhetorical question.


Outside of the care home for such daft Darwinist nonsense, the reason Matthew never took his idea any further forward and never trumpeted his discovery from any rooftops are quite obviously twofold.


Firstly, as Matthew (1860) informed Darwin in the pages of the Gardener's Chronicle', the first half of the 19th century was one where his unique ideas on the origin of species were deemed heretical and not to be taught or cited.  This is the exact same reason why other writers (e.g. Desmond, A. Moore, J. and Browne, J. (2007) Charles Darwin. Oxford. Oxford University Press.) think Darwin held off publishing his own work on natural selection for over 20 years.


Secondly, as shown on this page, Matthew posed his bombshell ideas as a hypothesis and simply invited other naturalists to test them by experiment and observation (pretty much like Alexander Fleming and Peter Higgs).  In the 19th century, as I explain in my book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret' (see also: Secord. J. A. (2000) Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Chicago and London. The University of Chicago Press.)  there was great prejudice against simply posing a deducted hypothesis and it was against the code of 19th century gentlemen of science to do so or to cite such work.  John van Wyhe (2007) has written a paper, which offers this as a very plausible reason why Darwin delayed publishing for so long.  The most telling question here is to ask: 'Why then should Darwinists insist that Matthew should have done that which they are perfectly happy to make rational excuses for their namesake not doing?' I think the answer is obvious. Darwinists are terribly biased-blinded in favour of their namesake.



Matthew


Solver of the problem of species


In 1831, the Scottish laird, farmer, orchard owner, grain dealer and botanist, Patrick Matthew, authored 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture.'  Matthew's book is universally recognised as the first publication to contain the complete hypothesis of the theory of natural selection. New evidence proves that both Darwin and Wallace lied by pretending they had no prior-knowledge of it; both committed science fraud by plagiarising Matthew's discovery, his name for it, his examples of the process in nature compared to culture. They even ripped-off his unique creative perspective.