Patrick Matthew

On the Topic of Those "Apparently First to be Second" (List 2) with "Apparently Unique Matthewisms"

I make it explicitly clear in my 2014 e-book that the Internet Date Detection research method employed in my research produced two very distinct lists of people with whom we should be concerned.

The first list comprises the 25 individuals identified as having actually read Patrick Matthew's (1831) book pre-185.  because they are 100 per cent proven to have actually cited the book in the published literature before that date. On this sample, I write in my book:

"The point must be repeated, in order to be adequately emphasised, at this juncture that whatever members of the scientific community and other readers of this book decide about the veracity of the First to Second Publish hypothesis, and the assumptions on which it is based, the ID method has indisputably detected 24 people who actually cited Matthew’s book and that, contrary to the current ‘knowledge myth’ started by Darwin that no naturalist read NTA, seven of those who cited it were indisputably men that Darwin would have called naturalists and three of those were his direct personal associates."

That Darwin in fact knew in 1860 (because Loudon had informed him) that the naturalist Loudon had reviewed his book in 1832, as well as one other (unnamed) who feared pillory punishment were he to teach the original ideas in it pre-1859, and that his book was banned by Perth Public Library in Scotland means that Darwin self-servingly and slyly lied when he wrote afterwards that no naturalists (1860) and then no one at all (1861) read Matthew's ideas before 1860. Moreover, if we follow the data, as none before me did, but should have, we find that Blyth (Darwin's admitted great influencer) had two of his most influential papers (Blyth 1835 and 1836) published in the journal on which Loudon was the Chief Editor. That  information about Darwin's lies together with the new data that three other naturalist well known to Darwin actually cited Matthew's book pre 1838 is the bombshell new information behind the sub- title of my book "Darwin's greatest secret". The bombshell discovery I originally made is that these newly discovered pathways for possible Mathewian "knowledge contamination" of the pre 1858 brain of Darwin, and of Darwin's lies to conceal that fact regarding Loudon, overturn prior knowledge. That fact is Darwin's greatest secret.

The second list in my e-book is more contentious. And it is described as such. This list (List 2) contains 30 individuals who are consistently described throughout the book as those who are "apparently first to be second" in the published  literature with "apparently unique Matthewisms".  Writing on this very issue, I make it very clear in my book that:

"The element of uncertainty that will always exist regarding the possibility that one, or indeed all, of these allegedly Matthewist phrases might at some future date prove to have been published pre-NTA, is effectively no different than the everlasting possibility that we may one day find disconfirming evidence for evolution in the fossil record. Indeed, it is the fact of its potential capability of being completely disconfirmed, and impossible to vary if disconfirmed, that makes the First to Second Publish hypothesis a promising scientific explanation for Darwin’s supposedly ‘independent’ replication of Matthew’s hypothesis. Deutsch (2011) explains that these two essential qualities - refutability and invariability – are essential characteristics of all good scientific explanations."

The authors listed in List 2, below, are those in my book who I found were "apparently first to be second" into published print with apparently unique Matthewisms that were apparently first coined in 1831. Contrary to the claims made on the silly Billy desperate blogs of some neerdowell pseudoscholalry Darwin worshipper cultists, I am not claiming that all those in List 2 read Matthew's book. The hypothesis is that they did either read it or else were in some way 'knowledge contaminated' from it - perhaps indirectly by somone else who did read it and then mentioned the term or phrase to them or somone they knew etc.

To date, one reviewer of my book has managed to find just one example in List 2 that is in fact not a unique Matthewism. Consequently, I am most grateful to Grzegorz Malec for making this discovery. He includes it in a review of my book in the science journal Philosophical Aspects of Origin.

Readers, who have read the text on this page so far, who then read Malec's (2016) book review, of Nullius will note that he focuses entirely upon the issues he has (many, if not all,  of which he fails to admit are raised by me in my book as detailed caveats about the method) with the "apparently first to be second with apparently unique Matthewisms" part of the research. Malec's style is to take my published acknowledged problems with the method and the conclusions we can draw from it and to then dishonestly present them as his own critical conceptions, thereby dishonestly implying I was ignorant of them. So consistently disingenuous is his review in this respect, and  many others, that I felt compelled to ask the journal for a right to reply. You can read my published right of reply in the journa; here.

I am, nevertheless, extremely grateful that Malec's apparently best attempt to find something factually wrong with my research did at least disconfirm one "apparently unique Matthewism" out of the list of 30. The Malec rebuttal is number 22 in the list below.

List 2

1.1832 – Mudie: ‘rectangular branching’

2.1833 – Ellerby: ‘plants so far asunder’

3.1835 – Main: ‘luxuriant growing trees’

4.1834 - Conrad: ‘admixture of species’

5.1834 – Roget: ‘living aggregates’

6.1834 – Low: ‘long continued selection’

7.1836 – Rafinesque: ‘evinced in the genus’

8.1837 – Wilson: ‘threatened ascendency’

9.1837 – Anonymous[1]: ‘nature’s own rearing’

10.1837 – Dovaston: ‘sport in infinite varieties’

11.1838 - Anonymous translator: ‘portion of the surface of our planet’

12.1840 – Buel: ‘infirm progeny’

13.1840 – Swackhamer: ‘beat off intruders’

14.1841 – Johnson: ‘adapted to prosper’

15.1841 – Hill: ‘deeper richer soil’

16.1842 – Selby:  ‘greater power of occupancy’

17.1844 – Low: ‘overpowering the less’

18.1846 – Emmons: ‘habits of varieties’

19.1846 – Alabama Supreme Court: ‘Infirmity of their condition’

20.1848: - Charnock: ‘stiffest and most obdurate’

21.1849 – Emmons: ‘deteriorated by culture’

22.1852 – Wilkin: ‘figure is best accommodated’ – Disproven by Grzegorz Malec in 2016 - 

                 Malec's highly misleading fact-denial general assertions rebutted by Sutton 2016

23.1853 - Andrews ‘impressions and habits acquired’

24.1854 – Mure: ‘dogmatical classification’

25.1855 – Fishbourne: ‘power to permeate’

26.1855 – Laycock: ‘mental or instinctive powers’

27.1856 – Gazlay: ‘adaptation to condition’

28.1858 - Powell: ‘restricted adaptation’

29.1858 – Floy: ‘law manifest in nature’

30. 1858 – Leidy: ‘impressions in insects’