F2b2 Hypothesis

Meet the people detected with the Big Data IDD research method who were apparently first to be second (F2b2) with apparently original terms or phrases from Patrick Matthew's On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (NTA).

IDD analysis (Sutton and Griffiths 2018)  found that Matthew appears to have coined at least 198 original phrases in NTA. Thirty (15%) of those phrases were first replicated pre- Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). In date order, List 2 contains the first to be second, pre-Origin, NTA phrase-replicating authors identified to date. Chambers, who actually cited Matthew's book, is included in this list because he was apparently first to second-publish Matthew's phrase only the month after the Origin had been first published and he had cited NTA in 1832. Everyone else in this part of the histographic analysis of NTA is a pre-1859 phrase replicator.


List 2


  • 1832 — Mudie: "rectangular branching"
  • 1833 — Ellerby: "plants so far asunder"
  • 1835 — Main: "luxuriant growing trees"
  • 1834 — Conrad: "admixture of species"
  • 1834 — Roget: "living aggregates"
  • 1834 — Low: "long continued selection"
  • 1836 — Rafinesque: "evinced in the genus"
  • 1837 — Wilson: "threatened ascendency"
  • 1837 — Anonymous: "nature's own rearing" (Spectator Journal)
  • 1837 — Dovaston: "sport in infinite varieties"
  • 1838 — Anonymous translator: "portion of the surface of our planet"
  • 1840 — Buel: "infirm progeny"
  • 1840 — Swackhamer: "beat off intruders"
  • 1841 — Johnson: "adapted to prosper"
  • 1841 — Hill: "deeper richer soil"
  • 1842 — Selby: "greater power of occupancy"
  • 1844 — Low: "overpowering the less"
  • 1846 — Emmons: "habits of varieties"
  • 1846 — Alabama Supreme Court: "Infirmity of their condition"
  • 1848 — Charnock: "stiffest and most obdurate"
  • 1849 — Emmons: "deteriorated by culture"
  • XX1852 — Wilkin: "figure is best accommodated" XX
  • 1853 — Andrews: "impressions and habits acquired"
  • 1854 — Mure: "dogmatical classification"
  • 1855 — Fishbourne: "power to permeate"
  • 1855 — Laycock: "mental or instinctive powers"
  • 1856 — Gazlay: "adaptation to condition"
  • 1858 — Powell: "restricted adaptation"
  • 1858 — Floy: "law manifest in nature"
  • 1858 — Leidy: "impressions in insects"

 

It is most important to note that my original (Sutton 2014) List 2 included Wilkin’s (1852) use of ‘figure is best accommodated’. However, I made a mistake there and my claim that he was fist to be second with that phrase was perfectly disproven and thankfully corrected by Grzegorz Malec in (2015). Notably, however, Malec’ s claim that managing to disprove only one – despite his best efforts to disprove more – of the F2B2 claims made for List 2 renders the entire list obsolete and completely disproves all the evidence in this book for Darwin’s plagiary of Matthew and Matthew’ influence on Darwin and Wallace, and on their influencers, and their influencer’s influencers is fanatically delusional hogwash. Consequently, the journal in which he published it published my rebuttal (Sutton 2016). Wikipedia, at the time of writing has published a link to Malec’s generally deceptive review as yet another state of fact denial action but in typical fanatical Darwin worship has not published my rebuttal – in the same journal - of the general conclusions he creates from it. Yet Malec’s fact denial review goes far beyond the counter-academic deviance of mere cherry picking, it is more a case of gross misrepresentation to the point of de facto fact denial amounting to historic revisionist behaviour. Who trusts Wikipedia?


Because David Low and Ebenezer Emmons were both first to be second twice with un-cited replications of Matthewisms, this list of the 30 earliest replications of Matthew's apparently exclusive phrases represents 28 individuals. And it must be particularly emphasized here that Low and Emmons thus provide profound confirmatory evidence for the F2B2 hypothesis.

The F2B2 hypothesis is that those who IDD detected were apparently first to be second wth apparently unique terms or phrases from NTA more likely than not read it. Once IDD found these people we needed to know something about them that might link them to reading NTA and /or to Darwin's social network. The whole purpose of this analysis is to identify possible routes for NTA knowledge contamination of the pre-1858 brains of  Darwin and Wallace before they replicated Matthew's theory and claimed it as their own dually independent conceptions.


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Mudie (1777-1840) -  "rectangular branching."


Like Matthew, Robert Mudie was born in Forfarshire in the 18th century. He was variously employed as a newspaper editor, artist and author. A year after NTA was published, he was apparently first to be second (Mudie 1832) with the phrase "Rectangular branching".


Mudie wrote on the same theme of Matthew's ideas about circumstance suited varieties and human activities leading to species extinction.


Mudie co-authored a book with Darwin's most prolific informant, Edward Blyth (White, Blyth, and Mudie 1850), and worked with him on an earlier one (Léopold, G. et al. 1840). This is a pertinent fact that should not be ignored, because Blyth is one naturalist known to have significantly influenced Darwin pre-Origin by way of his post NTA articles on evolution. That Mudie was so closely associated with Blyth, a naturalist acknowledged to have profoundly influenced Darwin with his post-NTA journal articles on varieties and species, provides new evidence that he quite likely told Blyth about Matthew's hypotheses. Or else, perhaps Blyth learned of Matthew first from Loudon and told Mudie? Perhaps both Blyth and Mudie read NTA independently of Loudon? Who knows? But one thing that is certain is that the high probability of Matthewian knowledge contamination from Loudon to both Blyth and his friend Mudie, and then from Blyth to Darwin, cannot be rationally doubted.


The discovery that Blyth's friend and co-author Mudie probably read NTA is further disconfirming evidence for the Darwinist myth that Matthew failed to have any significant influence on Darwin. Although a prolific author, Mudie died in poverty in 1842, 17 years before the Origin was published.


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Ellerby: "plants so far asunder"


I could discover almost nothing about the life of T. S. Ellerby other than that he was a pastor at the Zion Church in Toronto, Canada, in the 19th century. He was, in 1833, apparently first to be second with Matthew's phrase "plants so far asunder."



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Main (1775–1846)  "luxuriant growing trees."


In 1835, James Main (botanist) was apparently first to second-publish, without citing, Matthew's apparently unique phrase "luxuriant growing trees."


Like Darwin's mentor, Lyell, Main was a member of both the Linnean Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as was Darwin and many others in his inner circle. Main was also a professional plant collector and shareholder of the East India Company (see Fan 2009 p.164).


Main is particularly notable for his book Popular Botany. He published other works on botany and agricultural matters.


Aged 71, Main died 13 years before the Origin was published.


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Conrad (1803–1877)


In 1834, Timothy Abbot Conrad, an American geologist, malacologist and palaeontologist, was apparently first to second-publish Matthew's apparently unique phrase "admixture of species."


Conrad was a close friend and personal correspondent of Darwin's mentor Charles Lyell. Furthermore, Lyell was a personal guest of Conrad when he visited America in 1841 and 1842.


Conrad, who was elected a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1831, was the official geologist and palaeontologist of the New York Geological Survey. He wrote numerous books and academic articles.


As a staunch creationist to the end, we know that Conrad had zero motivation to promote Matthew's hypothesis, because when Darwin's Origin was first published 25 years after Conrad was apparently first to second-publish Matthew's unique phrase, his personal notes reveal the extent of his bitter opposition to natural selection theory (see Abbott 1895).
Conrad was 56 years old when the Origin was published.


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Buel (1778-1839)  F2b2 = "infirm progeny"


In 1840, Jesse Buel was apparently the first to second-publish Matthew's original phrase "infirm progeny."

Buel's father fought the British, serving as an officer, in the American War of Independence. One of fourteen siblings born into a Connecticut farming family, Buel was at turns a successful printer, bankrupt and then successful newspaper publisher, journal editor, landlord, famous agricultural reformer, U.S. judge and finally, like Matthew, he became an orchard owner.


Buel served as secretary of the State Board of Agriculture. Throughout the 1830s, he independently published the popular agricultural improvement journal The Cultivator and authored several books. He ran an experimental farm where he tested ideas for agricultural improvement. Like Matthew, he advocated liberal use of manure to prevent soil exhaustion and, just like Matthew, appreciated the personal and business benefits of successfully entering his produce into prestigious competitions.


Highly respected, with an international reputation for his agricultural expertise, Buel was an honorary member of the Lower Canada Agricultural Society, the London Horticultural Society, the Royal and Central Society of Agriculture at Paris and the Society of Universal Statistics in Paris (see Lossing 1855). He was awarded the London Horticultural Society's Silver and Bankian medals for apples and plums sent by the barrel for judgement.

That Judge Buel is mentioned in an article written by Izaac Hill (1841), who we will come to shorty, in which Hill is apparently first to be second with Matthew's phrase "deeper richer soil" is most important, because U.S. Senator Izaac Hill was preceded in the same position in public office by Levi Woodbury, who cited NTA. These interconnections provide further powerful confirmatory evidence that the IDD method is accurate in identifying Buel as someone who read NTA, and that these three influential men shared intelligence about the importance of Matthew's ideas within it.


Aged 61 years, Buel died 20 years before the Origin was published.


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Dovaston (1782–1854) - 'sport in infinite varities'


In 1837, John Freeman Milward Dovaston, the botanist, ornithologist, poet and naturalist, was apparently first to second-publish Matthew's unique phrase "sport in infinite varieties." Dovaston published the phrase in The Magazine of Natural History (1837). This magazine, known informally as Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, was owned and operated by John Loudon, who we know read and reviewed NTA in 1832.


As did Matthew, Dovaston inherited from his father a prosperous tree nursery. Dovaston's nursery, which was called simply "The Nursery," was in the village of West Felton in Shropshire. The Nursery became prosperous due to the fashion for planting trees among the aristocracy (Allen 1967).


As if the shared John Loudon link and the shared tree-nursery inheritance is not a big enough coincidence in the lives of Matthew and this man, who apparently first replicated his phrase, Dovaston attended the same school as Charles Darwin: The Shrewsbury School, in Shropshire!


By way of further remarkable coincidence, Dovaston suffered, like Darwin, with a chronic and mysterious digestive disorder. After several serious illnesses from digestive disorders, Dovaston's health failed in 1847, and he was permanently bedridden. Like Darwin in his middle years, he also showed a reluctance to travel far.


Dovaston is particularly noted for his poetry and his friendship with the engraver Thomas Bewick, whose book A History of British Birds he helped to edit.


Aged 72 years, Dovaston died five years before Darin's Origin was published.


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Ellerby  - "plants so far asunder."


I could discover almost nothing about the life of T. S. Ellerby other than that he was a pastor at the Zion Church in Toronto, Canada, in the 19th century. He was, in 1833, apparently first to be second with Matthew's phrase 

Gazlay


In 1856, the little-known writer Allen W. Gazlay, writing anonymously as Cephas Broadluck, (see Halkett 1971) was apparently first to second-publish Matthew's original phrase "adaptation to condition," in a book entitled Races of Mankind—the title of which is a topic that both Darwin and Asa Gray were financed to research by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. That was a topic covered also in NTA. Indeed, concern about such non-scientific deductions on the subject of human varieties was one principal motive for founding the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the very year that NTA was published.


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Low (1786–1859)


In 1834, David Low was apparently first to be second with Matthew's phrase "long continued selection" in his book Elements of Practical Agriculture: Comprehending the Cultivation of Plants, the Husbandry of Domestic Animals and The Economy of the Farm.


Just four years older than Matthew, Low was a highly esteemed professor of agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. Most importantly, like many who cited NTA—or else apparently first duplicated Matthewisms—Low was a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was a member also of the Royal Academy of Agriculture of Sweden.


Darwin adopted the same original Matthewism in his essay of 1842 :


"Now according to analogy of domesticated animals let us see what would result. Let us take case of farmer on Pampas, where everything approaches nearer to state of nature. He works on organisms having strong tendency to vary: and he knows only way to make a distinct breed is to select and separate. It would be useless to separate the best bulls and pair with best cows if their offspring run loose and bred with the other herds, and tendency to reversion not counteracted; he would endeavour therefore to get his cows on islands and then commence his work of selection. If several farmers in different regions were to set to work, especially if with different objects, several breeds would soon be produced. So would it be with horticulturist and so history of every plant shows; the number of varieties increase in proportion to care bestowed on their selection and, with crossing plants, separation. Now, according to this analogy, change of external conditions, and isolation either by chance landing a form on an island, or subsidence dividing a continent, or great chain of mountains, and the number of individuals not being numerous will best favour variation and selection. No doubt change could be effected in same country without any barrier by long continued selection on one species: even in case of a plant not capable of crossing would easier get possession and solely occupy an island."


Then in the Origin (Darwin 1859, p. 192) he used it again:


"As every one would be surprised if two exactly similar but peculiar varieties of any species were raised by man by long continued selection, in two different countries, or at two very different periods, so we ought not to expect that an exactly similar form would be produced from the modification of an old one in two distinct countries or at two distinct periods."


Low published several notable books entitled, respectively, Elements of Practical Agriculture (1834), The Breeds of Domesticated Animals (1840) and An Enquiry into the Nature of the Simple Bodies of Chemistry (1848).

In his book On Landed Property, and the Economy of Estates (1844), on page 546, Low was once again apparently first to be second with an NTA expression—once again without citing Matthew. In this later book, it was Matthew's original phrase "overpowering the less." This discovery of Low twice replicating Matthew's unique phrases in different books confirms the veracity of the First to be Second-Publish Hypothesis, and the value of the method in identifying plagiarism of ideas is further confirmed by the fact that Low replicated Matthew's exclusive theme that trees grown by means of artificial selection in nurseries were inferior to those naturally selected by nature.


"The Wild Pine attains its greatest perfection of growth and form in the colder countries, and on the older rock formations. It is in its native regions of granite, gneiss and the allied deposits, that it grows in extended forests over hundreds of leagues, overpowering the less robust species. When transplanted to the lower plains and subjected to culture, it loses so much of the aspect and characters of the noble original, as scarcely to appear the same. No change can be greater to the habits of a plant than the transportation of this child of the mountain to the shelter and cultivated soil of the nursery; and when the seeds of these cultivated trees are collected and sown again, the progeny diverges more and more from the parent type. Hence one of the reasons why so many worthless plantations of pine appear in the plains of England and Scotland, and why so much discredit has become attached to the culture of the species."


It is of paramount importance at this juncture to note that this newly discovered evidence in fact provides Darwin with a defence against Eiseley's (1979) claim that Darwin's use of artificially selected trees to explain natural selection, in his unpublished 1844 essay, is clear evidence of plagiarism. Because although Low almost certainly got it from Matthew (1831), Darwin could have got it from reading Low. Whatever the case, again we see Matthew's progeny in the relevant literature as influencing the man who influenced the man. However, and most importantly, we should note that Low published that book in 1844, which is the very same year Darwin’s private essay replicated the exact same highly idiosyncratic tree analogy.


Interestingly, in his notebook of books to read, Darwin writes in December 1839, "Advertised. David Low Treatise on Domestic Animals; also Illustrations of the Domestic animals of Gt. Britain—must be read carefully." But in that same notebook, Darwin makes no mention of having read Low's Elements of Practical Agriculture or of On Landed Property. In the Origin, however, Darwin went on to use the same Matthew-coined phrase "long continued selection," as several other writers did following Low's 1834 first replication of it. Whereas Low hyphenated the phrase, Darwin used it without the hyphen, just as Matthew had it in NTA.


It is unlikely to be purely coincidental, given that he was apparently twice to be first with apparently original Matthewisms in different publications and, most significantly, that Low was a former Perth Academy schoolmate of Patrick Matthew. Furthermore, he might even be the unnamed professor that Matthew (1860a) referred to in the Gardener's Chronicle, as the professor at an esteemed university who could not teach NTA's heretical hypothesis of natural selection because he feared being pilloried in church on the cutty stool. Perhaps it is from that same fear of public censure that Low failed to cite NTA as the source of the phrase? Perhaps he forgot where it came from? Perhaps he intended from the outset that others would associate the phrase with his own work, rather than its originator's?


More likely than any of the above, perhaps he simply had no choice but to give Matthew's book the silent treatment, due to the unwritten rules of conduct in practice among 19th century gentlemen of science. It is important to stress at this point that this silence was not complete, and it most certainly was not a conspiracy. As explained later in this chapter, and in more depth in others, it was an expectation of group-identity propriety. In the case in point, it was Low's gain and Matthew's loss, which makes the guilt neutralizing scientific convention of what amounted to a general silent treatment for books such as NTA institutionally corruptive.

Low's books broke none of the rules of those gentlemen of science. Darwin (1857a) recommended his On Domesticated Animals to the Royal Society on the grounds that "the time is coming when all records of domestic variation will be admitted as most very important." This suggests that further research into the possibility that Darwin and Low corresponded, or met, is, for obvious historical and criminological reasons, probably an area worthy of hot-academic pursuit.


Both Low and Robert Chambers (who cited NTA, met and corresponded with Darwin) lived in Edinburgh and were members of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Low met with Prideaux John Selby, another member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh who cited NTA. Selby was also an associate of Darwin.


Low and Selby served on a committee of the Berwick and Kelso Railway Company (Report of the Committee of the Berwick and Kelso Railway Committee 1837).


One thing is absolutely certain, which is that Matthew influenced Low. In turn, Low influenced Darwin's work. The case of Low furnishes us with yet another new discovery of hard evidence, which disconfirms as a myth the Darwinist belief that Matthew failed to influence either Darwin or any other naturalist with his discovery of natural selection.


Low's un-cited use of Matthew's classic phrase allowed Darwin to use it in what has now become a much quoted part of the Origin. At the time of writing, this phrase is incorrectly associated with Darwin alone.

Aged 73 years, Low died in the year the Origin was published.


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The above is just a random fraction taken from my 2014 book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret' research findings on the  F2B2 hypothesis. 



Foreword


The first edition of Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret (Sutton 2014) is a 600-page e-book that is currently unavailable for sale due to widespread criminal internet piracy of e-books and associated criminal ID fraud. The book reveals (in List 2) who was apparently first to be second (F2b2) with apparently unique terms and phrases coined by Patrick Matthew and the potential Matthewian knowledge contamination links of some of those authors to Darwin and Wallace and to their influencers and associates. As I explain in a science journal article of  reply to a disingenuous de-facto fact denial and, therefore, mischievously misleading book review of Nullius (here), the main findings in Nullius are to be found in List 1 of those - including seven naturalists -  newly discovered to have cited Matthew's (1831) book and their relationship to Darwin and Wallace and to their influencers and influencer's influencers. These findings are to be found in the abridged paperback of Nullius (vol 1. 2017). The reason those findings are so important is because they bust the myth started by Darwin's proven deliberate lie that apparently no naturalist had read Matthew's prior published breakthrough before Darwin’s and Wallace supposedly dual independent replications (Wallace and Darwin 1858 and Darwin 1859).  Having been corrected in an exchange of published letters in print by Matthew on the first lie, Darwin later lied again that no one whatsoever had read Matthew’s breakthrough pre-1858. And it is on this innumerably zombie parroted Darwin lie-based myth that the now newly busted paradigm of Darwin's and Wallace's supposedly miraculous immaculate conceptions of Matthew's  prior published breakthrough are based.  Complimenting the discoveries in List 1, the List 2 based F2b2 hypothesis proposes the likelihood of some form of original and unique Matthewian 'knowledge contamination' of the subsequent natural selection replicating work of Wallace and Darwin. My original List 2 discoveries related to the F2b2 hypothesis will be included in a volume 2  paperback of the Nullius (forthcoming). Currently, Vol. 1 is available world-wide from all Amazon sites, good bookshops and libraries.



Read an expert peer reviewed academic article on the IDD method (here).


Please do beware of counterfeit and bogus pirated copies of both the e-book and paperback of Nullius being sold online. These are compiled by criminal hackers, malicious cyberstalkers and identity fraudster scammers. Consequently, PDF and other downloadable files of Nullius are quite likely to contain phishing malware or other viruses. Moreover, the text may have been mischievously altered. Internet book pirate sites often look very professional, plausible and legitimate and are likely to rip-off your credit card and bank account details.Furthermore they may delivering anything but the product you think you are buying. Free downloadable versions may well install malware. To be safe and to read the actual newly discovered facts, buy Nullius only from Amazon sites or brick and mortar book shops. Alternatively, your library can get you a genuine copy.


With regard to those who cited Matthew's book, it is obvious that those we now newly know Darwin and Wallace knew, and who their friends and influencers knew - who actually read and then cited Matthew's book pre-1858 (List 1)- could have influenced Darwin and Wallace with the bombshell ideas in in it. Hence, knowledge contamination of ideas in publications can occur even when the person so influenced did not read the knowledge at its original source.


By way of a proposed simple typology of possibilities of “knowledge contamination”, all types which we now know could have occurred in the cases of those 19th century writers who actually cited Matthew's book or who were, out of the 30+ million historic publications analysed with the BigData IDD method, apparently first to be second in print with apparently original Matthewian terms and phrases, prior published unique ideas may contaminate the minds and work of others in three main ways (from my peer reviewed science article On Knowledge Contamination: New Data Challenges Claims of Darwin’s and Wallace’s Independent Conceptions of Matthew’s Prior-Published Hypothesis. Philosophical Aspects of Origin 2015, vol. 12


  1. Innocent Knowledge Contamination: The spread of original ideas in a prior-publication via (a) subsequent published sources on the topic, which failed to cite the Originator as their source, or (b) word of mouth and/or correspondence to the replicator by those who read the Originator’s work or communicated with others who did — understood its importance in whole or simply in part — but failed to tell the replicator about its existence.
  2. Reckless or Negligent Knowledge Contamination: (a) The replicator reads the original publication, absorbs information such as original ideas and examples and terms, but forgets having read it — and never does remember. (b) The replicator reads the original publication and takes notes, but forgets the source of the notes. (c) The replicator is told about original ideas in a publication by someone — who understands their importance in whole or simply in part — who explains they come from a publication, but the replicator fails to ask the name of the author and title of the publication.
  3. Deliberate Knowledge Contamination (science fraud): The replicator reads the original publication, or is told about its contents, takes notes, or is given notes, remembers this, but pretends otherwise.



Robert Mudie and the First to be Second (F2b2) Hypothesis, by Mike Sutton (Taken in large part from original blog post of Saturday, 8 August 2015)



A bullet-point abstract of just some, among many original pertinent facts on the F2b2 hypothesis, which confirm its veracity (from Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret 2014 and 2017, which provides full references to these independently verifiable facts, discovered by original Big Data analysis of obscure texts within the long forgotten 19th century historic publication record)


  • Cuthbert Johnson, a well-known agricultural chemist, was apparently first to be second in print in 1841 with Patrick Matthew's apparently original natural selection related term: 'adapted to prosper'. The following year he cited Matthew's (1831) book 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture' on a different topic. Johnson, like Darwin was a member of the Royal Society. Pre-1858, Darwin was a correspondent of Johnson's brother.


  • The Scot, Robert Chambers, in his 1859 book review of Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species, was apparently first to be second in print with Matthew's (1831) apparently original term 'natural process of selection'. That term was apparently originally four word shuffled by Darwin (1859) to 'process of natural selection'. Pre-1858, Darwin and Chambers met and corresponded. Chambers is the author of the best-selling book on evolution the 'Vestiges of Creation' (1844) - a book which Darwin and Wallace each admitted was a great influence on their pre-1859 work on natural selection, and is widely proclaimed to have 'put evolution in the air' in the first half of the 19th century. Chambers cited Matthew's (1831) book on another topic in 1832, later in 1840 Chambers cited Matthew's second (1839) book 'Emigration Fields'. Chambers even went so far in 1842 as to write his own guide on arboriculture after citing Matthew's (1831) book on the same topic.


  • The Scot, David Low, in 1834 was apparently first to be second with Matthew's apparently original natural selection related term 'adapted to prosper'. Darwin adopted the same Matthewism in his 1842 private essay and later in his (1859) 'Origin of Species'. Confirming the F2b2 hypothesis, in a later book, Low (1844), was apparently first to be second in print a second time with another apparently unique Matthewism. This one is "overpowering the less." In that second replication, Low also replicated Matthrew's highly idiosyncratic explanatory natural selection analogy of differences between trees grown in nurseries versus those growing in the wild. Most importantly, Low was a Perth academy schoolmate of Matthew. Darwin recommended Low's work to the Royal society. Moreover, pre-1858, Low met and corresponded with Robert Chambers and with Prideaux John Selby - both of whom were well known to Darwin, both of whom cited Matthew’s (1831) book in the decade before Darwin's and Wallace's 1858 replications of Matthew's bombshell scientific breakthrough. Notably, Selby was the editor of the journal that published Wallace’s 1855 Sarawak paper on evolution! Routes for potential Matthewian 'knowledge contamination' of Darwin's and Wallace's replications of Matthew's original prior-published breakthrough are confirmed by these David Low connections alone.


  • The Scot, Robert Mudie was apparently first to be second to replicate in print Matthew's (1831) apparently original term for crab apple trees 'rectangular branching'. This is important for the study of various potential routes for knowledge contamination because Blyth (Darwin's self-admitted most prolific pre-1858 informant on the topic of species and varieties) co-wrote two books with Blyth. And the editor of two of Blyth's most influential articles was John Loudon who reviewed Matthew's (1831) in 1832 and wrote in that review that Matthew appeared to have something original to say on the topic of 'the origin of species' no less!


Introduction


My original work in discovering the links between David Low and Robert Mudie to Patrick Matthew's (1831) original prior-published discovery of the 'natural process of selection' and Darwin's replication of it would not have been possible without Google Chrome and the IDD Big Data research method (see Sutton 2014), which enabled me to search through over 30 million books and journals.


So effective is the IDD research method that it enabled me to get back further with the Google search engine than Google's own staff - where I used the Google Monster to sniff out its namesake. In fact, I used Google to discover the original Google! You can read that amusing story about the unique power of IDD over other methods of using Google, employed by Google's own staff and others, here.



The Mudie Connection Between Matthew and Darwin was Orignially Unearthed using the Internet Date Detection (IDD method)


In the year I was born, Loren Eiseley caused a stir among Darwinite historians of science and Darwin biased superfans in 1959 when he accused Charles Darwin of plagiarizing the work of Edward Blyth (see Smith 1979)  for an interesting but somewhat disingenuous overview of Eisleley's collected works of 1979, where Smith, in the general and unfortunately biased fashion of so many typical desperate Darwinists gives, in my opinion, the dismissive false impression - deliberate or just remiss - that it is he who has discovered that Blyth took much from Mudie's 1835 "Feathered Tribes" book, when in fact Eiseley (1979, page 61) laboured the point, and it is from him that Smith gets it. This is obvious, just so long as you bother to read Eiseley carefully.


Unfortunately, at a time when others were far more diligent, neither Mudie nor Matthew were good at citing their influencers (see my blog on Matthew's plagiarism). A key difference between Blyth and Smith is that Blyth was careful to cite his sources. The difference between Blyth and Darwin is just the same! The difference between Eiseley and Smith is that Eiseley was careful to cite his sources. The difference between Eiseley and Darwin the same.


Eiseley's collected papers on the topic of Darwin's plagiarism of Blyth can be found in the Book that contains those collected papers on Darwin. namely, Darwin and the Mysterious Mr X, which was published in 1979, two years after Eiseley's death.


Loren Eiseley (1979) ably demonstrated (pp 61-62) that Darwin cumulatively borrowed from Blyth's (1835) book 'The feathered tribes of the British islands' and his other published papers, without citing them.

 

Edward Blyth, twice co-author with Robet Mudie cited Mudie's work that Darwin replicated without citation. Blyth is widely acknowledged to have had a significant Influence on Darwin pre-1858. Blyth's most influential papers were edited by Loudon, who had earlier - in 1832 - reviewed Patrick Matthew's (1831) book and said it might have something original to say on "the origin of species"! Darwin's associate William Hooker (father of Darwin's best friend) knew Loudon and his friends very well!


Much of Darwin's prose, it was ably demonstrated by Eiseley, came from Blyth's papers of 1835 and 1837. But it is true also that nothing much of the full hypothesis of natural selection comes from them (see Smith 1979   ); although they are important papers on variety and habitat etc. But when it comes to his 1837 paper on to topic of "variation" and the "localizing principle" -  (published by Longman and co - Matthew's London publisher - no less) - Eiseley (1979, p. 91) explains that Blyth comes close to the theory on natural selection. On this point, Eiseley- points out the work of De Beer which shows how much Blyth influenced Darwin's writing in his private Zoonomia notebook of 1837-38. What De Beer and Eiseley failed to note is that Blyth's "localizing principle" is heavily dependent upon Matthew's bombshell observations six years earlier of "power of occupancy".


In particular, we must remember that the religious Blyth did not believe in the evolution of species and pulled back from where his prose was leading-back to Matthew's conclusions that species could vary so much that they became new species. See Eiseley (1979 p.58 for an explanation of this fact). And that is a key point about the limitations of stopping at Blyth, as Eiselely did, and of not going back from him to Matthew - who originated and wrote out the entire theory of natural selection and was cited many times and reviewed by Blyth's editor - John Loudon and with whom we can establish collegiate links with Blyth's friend Mudie and others (as explained in great detail in Nullius) and particularly Mudie's acknowledged influence on Blyth and the prose and ideas that Darwin copied from Blyth, without any attribution, that Blyth did attribute to Mudie.


Some 55 years later, now that the dust has settled on Eiseley's (1959) work, and his many papers that followed, it is essentially agreed that Darwin did steal much prose from Blyth and no doubt was influenced by the information he provided. However, unlike Matthew - the Originator of Natural selection and the great analogy that explained it, Blyth was well acknowledged by Darwin from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward as an important and highly valued general influence on his work.


Blyth might not have published the hypothesis of natural selection before Darwin, but Patrick Matthew certainly did before them both.


Prior to the reading of Wallace's and Darwin's papers before the Linnean society in 1858, it is widely agreed by the top scholars in the field, including Darwin  and Wallace, de Beer, Mayr and Weale (see Nullius for references) that Patrick Matthew in 1831 originally penned the entire hypothesis of natural selection 


Of great importance, is the fact that it has gone unremarked until I wrote in 2014 these very same words you reading   , that the editor and publisher of Blyth's (1835, 1836) most important papers on organic evolution was John Loudon, who in 1832, reviewed NTA and remarked that Matthew had discovered something unique on the origin of species!


Since Darwin admitted Blyth's influence on his thinking, this discovery of almost certain knowledge contamination, is alone enough to completely demolish the 154-year-old Darwinian myth that Matthew had no influence on Darwin.


Eiseley thought also that in addition to stealing from Blyth that Darwin had read and plagiarized Patrick Matthew's discovery of natural selection. But apart from what Jim Dempster, and later Milton Wainwright    and Hugh Dower and myself, have written on that topic, Eiseley's discovery in this area has been most conveniently ignored by Darwinists.


Eiseley noted that following Matthew’s letter in the Gardener’s Chronicle of 1860 – claiming his priority – that Darwin (1868) replicated his 1844 private essay replication of Matthew’s unique prior-published analogy – this time citing Matthew.


In my earlier blog on Matthew's Artificial versus Natural Selection Analogy I included the text that Eiseley discovered. I now include it again.


Eiseley (1979): "Matthew wrote, 'Man's interference, by preventing this natural process of selection among plants, independent of the wider range of circumstances to which he introduces them, has increased the differences in varieties particularly in the more domesticated kinds...' "In his unpublished essay of 1844,

Darwin wrote, 'In the case of forest trees raised in nurseries, which vary more than the same trees do in their aboriginal forests, the cause would seem to lie in their not having to struggle against other trees and weeds, which in their natural state doubtless would limit the conditions of their existence…"


In that later text, to which Eiseley directs us, Darwin (1868) wrote:


"Our common forest trees are very variable, as may be seen in every extensive nursery-ground; but as they are not valued as fruit trees, and as they seed late in life, no selection has been applied to them; consequently, as Patrick Matthew remarks, they have not yielded different races…"


Eiseley knew nothing of David Low's 1844 replication of so much of Matthew's work (seeNullius). Therefore, he wrote that Darwin must have got this example from Matthew by 1844. However, I discovered with ID that Professor David Low replicated Matthew's original analogy in 1844 as well as being the first to second publish unique Matthewisms. Darwin read Low and recommended him to Royal Society. Low was Matthew's Perth Academy schoolmate and shared the exact same Edinburgh and London Publishers as Matthew (see my Position Paper Sutton 2014). How's that for a bunch of mere coincidences?


David Low (1844) wrote enough that was similar to Matthew's text for it to be said, I think, that Darwin could in fact have got the idea - as a form of indirect 'knowledge contamination' from him:


The Wild Pine attains its greatest perfection of growth and form in the colder countries, and on the older rock formations. It is in its native regions of granite, gneiss and the allied deposits, that it grows in extended forests over hundreds of leagues, overpowering the less robust species. When transplanted to the lower plains and subjected to culture, it loses so much of the aspect and characters of the noble original, as scarcely to appear the same. No change can be greater to the habits of a plant than the transportation of this child of the mountain to the shelter and cultivated soil of the nursery; and when the seeds of these cultivated trees are collected and sown again, the progeny diverges more and more from the parent type.'


However, another got there before Low. His name was Robert Mudie and he was born in Matthew's county of Forfarshire in Scotland and he published on this topic only a year after Matthew. I came accross Mudie by searching with the IDD (See Sutton and Griffiths 2018) method for specific words terms and phrases that, out of 30+ million books and journals online, Matthew 1831 appears to have coined. Mudie in 1832 was first to be second to use the extremely rare and apparently unique phrase "rectangular branching". This strongly suggests it is more likley than not that Mudie read Matthew's book as soon as it came out. If not, then it sees probably that the term was read by somone else and that Mudie was in some way rapidly 'knowledge contaminated' by them.


Only later did I find, from reading Eiseley (1979), that Mudie was a friend and associate of Darwin's great influencer, Blyth. See page 171 of Eiseley 1979 - which explains that Blyth and Mudie worked together on an illustrated translation of Cuvier in 1840 - and that Blyth had read and cited much of Mudie's work. Some of the prose within Mudie's considerable output was about the camouflage of birds, Blyth used and cited it. That same prose, Eiselely discovered, was replicated without citation by Darwin.


The fact that I reached Mudie through an entirely different route than Eiseley - and the fact of Mudie's undoubted influence upon Blyth, who had an undoubted influence upon Darwin reveals two things. Firstly, it provides more data to confirm my "First to Be Second Hypothesis" by way of such unexpected and unpredictable triangulation. Namely that it seems more likely than not that Mudie read Matthew's book because he was frst to second publish Matthew's term "rectangular branching" also was first to replicate Matthew's unique "artificial versus natural selection explanatory analogy of differences" ; and secondly, it reveals almost certain knowledge contamination from Matthew to Mudie to Blyth to Darwin.


What was said to whom we may never know, but we do know by way of his correspondence to Joseph Hooker    that Darwin probably met Blyth pre-1848 - because in that year he recommended him to Hooker before he had, himslef, begun corresponding with him. Moreover, we know that Mudie and Blyth met because they collaborated together on two publications pre-1858. Face to face, via correspondence, via publications, or from third party oral information, my typology of knowledge contamination shows the various ways Matthew's prior published work could have entered Darwin's brain pre-1858.


If the internet was available in Eiseley's day there is little doubt that he would have made the same connection that I did, Namely that Mudie - who so influenced Blyth and Darwin - had surely read Matthew by 1832.


The case for Matthewian knowledge contamination of Darwin's brain by Mudie, who read Matthew (1831) and wrote about evolution without citing Matthew, is extremely powerful and it is far more significant than the simple fact discovered by Eiseley and celebrated by his peers, that the prose of Blyth (taken from his associate Mudie) - was replicated by Darwin without citation to its source.


Mudie (1832) Page 368 wrote:


If we are to observe nature, therefore, we must go to the wilds, because, in all cultivated productions, there are secondary characters produced by the artificial treatment, and we have no means of observing a distinction between these, and those which the same individual would have displayed, had it been left to a completely natural state. The longer that the race has been under the domestication and culture, the changes are of course the greater. So much is that the case that in very many both of the plants and animals that have been in a state of domestication since the earliest times of which we have any record, we know nothing with certainty about the parent races in their wild state. As to the species, or if you will the genus we can be certain. The domestic horse has not been cultivated out of an animal with cloven hoofs and horns; and the domestic sheep has never been bred out of any of the ox tribe. So also wheat and barley have not been cultivated out of any species of pulse, neither have Windsor beans at any time been grasses. But within some such limits as these our certain information lies; and for aught we know the parent race may, in its wild state, be before our eyes every day and yet we may not have the means of knowing that it is so. The breeding artificially has been going on for at least three thousand years…’   


Mudie (1832)  Page 369-370


But there is another difficulty. When great changes are made on the surface of a country, as when forests are changed into open land, and marshes into corn fields, or any other change that is considerable, the changes of the climate must correspond; and as the wild productions are very much affected by that, they must also undergo changes; and these changes may in time amount to the entire extinction of some of the old tribes, both of plants and of animals, the modification of others to the full extent that the hereditary specific characters admit, and the introduction of not varieties only but of species altogether new.


That not only may but must have been the case. The productions of soils and climates are as varied as these are; and when a change takes place in either of these, if the living productions cannot alter their habits so as to accommodate themselves to the change there is no alternative, but they must perish.’


Mudie (1832) seemed to be recommending that humans engage in trying to approximate a kind of natural process of selection (370-371):


Cultivation itself will deteriorate, and in time destroy races, if the same race and the same mode of culture be pursued amid general change. Our own times are times of very rapid change, and, upon the whole, of improvement; we dare not, without the certainty of their falling off, continue the same stock and the same seed corn, season after season, and age after age, as was done by our forefathers. The general change of the country, must have change and not mere succession, in that which we cultivate; and thus we must cross the breeds of our animals, and remove the seeds and plants of our vegetables from district to district. There is something of the same kind in human beings..


The Matthew --> Mudie --> Low --> Blyth --> Darwin Connection


Much of the text that follows is taken from my previous blog on the F2b2 Hypothesis:


The Case of Robert Mudie and Matthewian 'Knowledge Contamination' of Darwin's so called 'independent discovery of natural selection.


•In his Book The Botanic Animal Robert Mudie (1832) was apparently the first to replicate the Matthewism "rectangular branching" - a phrase not used in print again (apparently) until 1855 and next in 1871.


•Mudie (1832) was first to replicate Matthew's (1831) unique Artificial Selection versus Natural Selection Explanatory Analogy of Differences.


•The Scot, Mudie, like Matthew, was born in Forefarshire Scotland


•Mudie, a prolific author, worked energetically for borough reform with R. S. Rintoul, editor of the radical Dundee Advertiser - a newspaper that was very kind to Patrick Matthew - giving him a voice when others would not.


•Mudie was a friend and twice co-author with Blyth    - the naturalist who most assisted and influenced Darwin pre-Orign. And Blyth's two early papers on species variety - that so influenced Darwin - were edited by John Loudon who reviewed Matthew's 1831 book in 1832 and remarked that it may have had something original to say on "The Origin of Species".


•Mudie died in 1842 - leaving his second wife (daughter of a captain in the East India Company) penniless. One report describes him as an intemperate spendthrift worn out too early by excessive intellectual endeavor and poverty.


•The highly respected anthropologist and science historian Loren Eiseley (1979, p. 214) spotted in a different 1832 publication of Mudie's that this particular Scot had somehow grasped, something, quite significant:


'Long ago when Darwin was still a youth aboard the Beagle, the Naturalist Robert Mudie, faithful to his century, had written:


' "There is a law that maintains the species." Scarcely had he made this assertion before he was busy explaining that all cultivated plants or animals were more or less monsters and that of the appearance of their parentage we know little or nothing. Even of wild forms he ends by hinting ambiguously of the emergence of species "altogether new". Finally he verges on complete heresy. "There is something," he almost whispers, "of the same kind in human beings," '


Eiseley was citing and quoting from: Mudie, R. (1832) A Popular Guide to the Observation of Nature. Whitaker, Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications of Literature, Science & the Arts. Vol. LXXVII Teacher and Co,  London, And Waugh and Innes.Edinburgh. pp. 366-371.


In his own earlier book of 1832, Mudie writes a great deal of text that focuses upon Matthew's topic of forest trees and the effects upon wood of the natural and cultivated circumstances in which it grows.


Conclusion


Did Mudie read his Forefarshire neighbor's - Patrick Matthew's - book, published the year before one of his own replicated a unique Matthewism and another of his books touched upon the same heresy? Did he influence Blyth with some type of Mathewian knowledge contamination so that Blyth's work - that so significantly influenced Darwin - infected Darwin's brain? Did Darwin get his knowledge about the difference between trees under artificial selection and those under natural selection directly from Matthew, and/or indirectly from either (or both) Mudie and Low?


Was Blyth, Darwin's great influencer, more likely than not double-dosed with Matthewian knowledge via his editor Loudon, who reviewed Matthew's book, as well as by Mudie? I would say so.


Darwin always maintained that neither he nor any naturalist known to him had read Matthew's 1831 book, which contained the full prior-published hypothesis of natural selection and the most powerful analogy in the world to explain it. Darwin was 100 per cent wrong! He did know four of the seven naturalists who read it. All seven cited Matthew's book it in the literature pe-1858! And three of those naturlaists (Loudon, Selby and Chambers) played major roles at his and Wallace's epicenter of ipre-1858 influence on natural selection.


Seeing Matthew's comparison between artificial selection and nature - not just in terms of the specific examples he used but focusing instead on that analogy - "Artificial versus Nature's Selection Explanatory Analogy of Differences" Matthew was the first person ever to use that analogy. Others had earlier explained what artificial slection did but they never compared varieties selected by man with the fewer number of varieties in the wild (many such as Blaine (1824) came very close - see his footnotes on pages 97 to 98   .) in describing how greyhounds and pointers were not best suited to hunting under certain conditions in the wild. But, as did Matthew's predecessors, he failed to point out the natural selection implications that there are - when we compare artificially selected domesticated with wild species - fewer varieties in the wild, or else specifically stating that they could not survive in competition with wild varieties in any natural conditions

We now know Robert Mudie - in 1832 - was first to replicate Matthew's analogy and he influenced Blyth and Blyth cited him many times and co-authored with him twice. Darwinists accept that Blyth influenced Darwin and that Mudie influenced Blyth. What no one knew until I discovered it in 2014, is that Mudie (1832) was also first to be second with Matthew's unique phrase "rectangular branching". Mudie was also born in the same county as Matthew - Forfarshire in Scotland. Clearly, Mudie read Matthew's book by 1832.


If Mudie did not influence Blyth with intelligence about Matthew's book, then we are expected to believe that so much that Blyth (whose editor Loudon reviewed Matthew's book in 1832) wrote that was similar to what Matthew wrote was conceived independently of Matthew's prior-publication of the same ideas, when only the year before Mudie, who was Blyth's close friend.had read Matthew's 1831 book - a book that contained the very same ideas and that was the original source of those ideas that Blyth replicated before Darwin replicated them next in 1844 and 1859.


Darwin opened the Origin of Species with Matthew's 1831 unique analogy of Artificial versus Natural Selection! The very first words Darwin (1859) wrote are: " ‘When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.”


Only when we realize that Matthew coined that analogy do we now see the conclusive evidence of Matthew's massive influence on Darwin. Matthew coined the worlds most powerful analogy to explain his unique discovery the worlds most important scientific theory. So important was the analogy - so influential - so powerful Darwin used it to open "The Origin of Species".


Read my blog on the topic to understand why, by virtue of being biologists, Darwinists failed to realize that Matthew also coined the very same analogy Darwin replicated to explain natural selection 27 years after Matthew originated it!


Not so much a dual immaculate conception by Darwin and Wallace as a case of immaculate deception! Game set and rational match to Matthew!


If such a macabre thing were possible, I expect Loren Eiseley and Patrick Matthew would be singing in their graves.


To find out more: Read my book Nullius in Verba for more highly detailed information about Darwin's and Wallace's great plagirising science fraud by glory theft


Archived reference


Smith (1979) Here





Click pop out pdf above of British Society of Criminology, published and peer reviewed paper (Sutton 2014 here) on Charles Darwin's proven lies and plagiarising glory theft of  Patrick Matthew's (1831) prior published breakthrough. [Editor's archived note on peer reviewed process here].

First edition Kindle e-book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest sectret'  (published in 2014 by Thinker Media, Thinker Books USA).

Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret 600-page Kindle e-book is currently unavailable due to ongoing investigations into criminal book piracy, copyright fraud, cyberstalking, criminal malicious communications, malware dissemination and ID fraud by cybercriminals who have hacked it and those who are disseminating the illegal hacked files.


From November 2017, you are advised not to download any version of this e-book, because the illegally hacked and disseminated hacked files are likely to be infected with hacker malware by those sharing and disseminating them. Moreover, the book's original academic content is likely to have been altered by the criminals involved.


Please purchase the official paperback abridged version from Amazon here. Paperback volumes 2 and 3 are forthcoming.


Available only from all Amazon sites, good bricks and mortar bookshops and libraries world wide. Bogus fake versions are being sold on various other websites online by criminal book pirates and identity fraudsters.

Nullius in Verba (paperback vol. 1) is avaialable from all Amazon sites, good bookshops and libraries. E.g Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Depicting Darwin's and Wallace's dually miraculous immaculate conceptions of Patrick Matthew's prior published bombshell breakthrough in science, which their friends and influencers in fact did read before they conceived it independently! Rather like two people conceiving the child of a supernatural deity whilst each is surrounded by men whose testicles are fertile.  Oil on Canvas by Gabriel Woods.

~~~


F2B2 Hypothesis


An earlier version of this essay can be found on https://www.datasciencecentral.com/forum/topics/f2b2-hypothesis


Posted by Dr Mike Sutton on August 14, 2015 at 9:16am.


Exploiting Google's Library project of over 30 million publications it is possible to discover who (amongst those documents) published a word, term, phrase or concept before the claimed originator.


In numerous blog posts and articles  over the past year, I have presented and discussed my unique findings, which now 100 per cent dis-confirm all prior Darwinist knowledge beliefs that Patrick Matthew's (1831) original prior published hypothesis of natural selection  was unread by naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace.


The significance of the New Data is that the old Darwinist dual 'independent discovery' story is now dis-confirmed, because I discovered that influential naturists, well known to Darwin and Wallace, who each admitted significantly influenced their work on natural selection, had actually cited Matthew's 1831 book in the literature before Darwin and Wallace had their papers on the same topic read before the Linnean Society in 1858.


You might perhaps wish to know more about how I discovered this New Data, and you might, perhaps, try out my method for yourself in other areas of contested knowledge that currently interest or later occur to you. If so, then you will be glad to know that anyone can learn how to use the Internet Date Detection (ID) method. I show you how in the first three chapters of Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret. Those three chapters from my book are available completely free of charge on Amazon.    Perhaps you will even check out the 5-star reviews whilst you are there and think about supporting me and my publisher - - by buying a copy of the book that changes everything we once thought we knew about the discovery of natural selection? If so, or if you have purchased a copy already, I thank you for your money.


In this blog post, I focus on a more controversial research method to reveal just some of the other unique findings it has so far produced. All of the unique findings so far discovered with this method are revealed and discussed in Chapter Four of Nullius.


The First to be Second (F2b2) Hypothesis


Those who the IDD method in Google's Library reveals are apparently first to be second with apparently original words, terms or phrases more likely than not replicated them because they read them first in the apparently original source.


One element of this unique research method involved discovering apparently original phrases and terms in Patrick Matthew's 1831 book and then searching in an instant on the Internet through millions of books and other publications to see who appears to have been first to second-publish them.


In this way, a number of long-dead research subjects identified themselves like ghosts, coming down from the dusty library shelves and out of the archive boxes, to present the relevant pages of their long forgotten works for scrutiny.


Robert Chambers - Author of the Vestiges of Creation (1844) that is said to have put 'evolution in the air' before Darwin - cited Matthew's 1831 book in 1832. In 1859, Chambers was 'first to be second' with Matthew's unique term 'natural process of selection' in his review of Darwin's 'Origin of Species.'


That many of those detected in this way turned out to be connected in various ways socially or geographically to Matthew, in Darwin's social network and to have written pre-1858 work that is known to have influenced Darwin involved absolutely no known selection bias on my part. Whether the replications and links are all mere coincidence is something currently beyond our means of knowing. In that respect it is a science problem in need of a solution. Meanwhile, what has been detected about those who were first to be second with unique "Matthewisms" is worthy of careful examination and cautious consideration.


Notes and caveats on the "First to be Second Hypothesis"


One particular caveat must be emphasized regarding this new research method and the associated First to be Second Hypothesis (F2b2). Namely, that my interpretation that someone is apparently first to be second with an exclusive term or phrase rests on the premise that it is unlikely that an earlier use by the apparent originator, replicator or another exists beyond what is currently in Google's Library Project.

Further caveats must be stressed about this highly controversial research method and hypothesis- and I state these very plainly in Nullius. and in Rebuttal 21 of my responses to Darwinist Defenses Against the New Data.


The F2b2 hypothesis alone is never going to give us 100 per cent certainties, as did my discovery with the IDD method did in absolutely proving other naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace in fact did read - and cite - Matthew's book pre-1858. However, like all academic work, particularly like all discoveries, it rigorously enjoys the ever present 'threat' that dis-confirming evidence may turn up and refute my claims in each case where I claim Matthew was apparently first to use a term or phrase, and also in each of the cases where I claim another person was apparently the first to replicate that apparently unique "Matthewism".


Most importantly, this method is not a witch hunt that involves finding a scholar and searching within all their publications for Matthewisms. On the contrary, the terms and phrases are used to search within the entire 30+ million documents in the Google Library pre-1858. It is the author's that effectively reveal themselves by apparently being the first to have replicated an apparently unique term or phrase.


Of the 30+ million documents Google has so far scanned and uploaded to the Internet, the vast majority are out of copyright. Since my investigation of Darwin’s claim to have independently discovered natural selection (Sutton 2014   ) was predominantly focused upon works published more than 150 years ago, it is this mammoth sample of the literature that I spent several months searching through.


Not every out of copyright publication has been uploaded to the internet yet. But an army of volunteers is currently sweeping through many major university libraries in the US and UK, scanning and uploading everything they are legally able, from the 1930s backwards to before the 10th century.


With such a large sample of the out of copyright literature now uploaded, the Internet Date Detection (ID) way to discover who almost certainly read a publication is to go through it and simply, subjectively, eyeball very single term and phrase that looks like it might be exclusive to the publication you are concerned with. Once candidate terms and phrases are sampled in this way they can then subjected to the ID process, which was explained fully in Chapter Two. The method is akin to those very simple word search puzzles.


The IDD process revealed many of the phrases found in this way were, apparently, coined by Matthew in 1831, and integral to his natural selection hypothesis. They were, therefore, all subject to a second round of IDD to see who was apparently first to be second to deploy the in print.


Since the IDD method has identified many naturalists in Darwin’s close social and professional network, who more likely than not read Matthew's (1831) book, the onus on disproving the veracity of the F2b2 hypothesis lies now with those who wish to challenge its findings and my conclusions. Since the IDD method is based upon the analysis of millions of scanned and uploaded documents, one way to challenge it is to discover any, so far undiscovered, pre-Matthew (1831) publications where the phrases occur. Only two other ways exist: prove with some other evidence that its premise is completely unsound, or seriously questionable, or else do the same with logic, reason and evidence to show that is not capable of allowing us to accurately discover who did first and was first to be second to publish a given word, term or phrase.


One important possibility should be considered by anyone quite rightfully seeking to challenge the unknowable reliability of IDD regarding detecting who was first to be second to replicate a unique phrase, which is that this exact same criticism surely implies also that IDD cannot reliably find all those who actually cited Matthew. And that means the current count of 24, including seven naturalists, is an undercount. If it is an undercount then yet more in Darwin’s inner circle who indisputably read Matthew are likely to exist, which means that further incriminating discoveries will be made just as soon as the search engine improves, any currently ‘hidden’ important books are scanned and the paper bound archives of Darwin’s friends and prolific correspondents are explored for evidence on this particular question.


I very much doubt that I have found them all, and I might even have missed the most important ones. However, at the time of writing, 198 apparently Matthew coined phrases have been discovered as having been reproduced in the literature by different authors after 1st January 1831 and prior to publication of the Origin in 1859.


To revisit one important caveat outlined in Chapter One in my book Nullius in Verba, it is anticipated that the current ‘Googlebug’ that I discovered in my research, which prevents the IDD method from detecting exact words, terms or phrases if they are precisely enclosed in “double inverted comas”, will soon be remedied. However, because of that bug it is necessary be clear that, at least at the time of writing, the First to be Second Hypothesis is based on the premise that whoever was first to coin any of the terms and phrases examined in this book did not go into print with them in double inverted commas. In other words, where phrases and terms have been identified as being coined by Matthew, it is assumed that no one published the same terms or phrases earlier and enclosed them in inverted commas.


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-Matthew 1831, is effectively no different than the ever lasting possibility that we may one day find disconfirming evidence for evolution in the fossil record.


The fact of its potential capability of being completely disconfirmed, and impossible to vary if disconfirmed, makes the F2b2 hypothesis a promising scientific explanation for Darwin’s supposedly ‘independent’ replication of Matthew’s hypothesis. Deutsch (2012)    explains that these two essential qualities - refutability and invariability – are essential characteristics of all good scientific explanations.


Some initial confirmatory evidence for the validity of the F2b2 hypothesis - that those who first second-published unique phrases from Matthew 1831 pre-Origin did read the book - comes by way of the fact that prior to 1859 the naturalists David Low and Ebenezer Emmons were twice apparently first to be second with exclusive Matthewisms. The agriculturalist Cuthbert Johnson, was apparently first to be second with ‘adapted to prosper’ and then actually cited Matthew in a separate publication to the one where he replicated that phrase. Contrariwise, Robert Chambers, author of the hugely influential (see Millhauser 1959) pre-cursor to Darwin’s Origin - ‘The Vestiges of Creation’ - cited Matthew (1831) in 1832. Then, 27 years later, in 1859, he was apparently first to second-publish Matthew’s unique phrase ‘natural process of selection’ in his review of Darwin's Origin of Species.


The way forward


Two cases follow this explanation of the F2b2 hypothesis and the research method that led to it. Both cases are merely examples from Nullius of some surprising results, which provide remarkably unexpected confirmatory evidence for it. These cases, and the others, are discussed in far greater detail and context in the book, where all sources are fully referenced.


The Case of Robert Mudie


  • In his Book The Botanic Animal Robert Mudie (1832) was apparently the first to replicate the Matthewism "rectangular branching" - a phrase not used in print again (apparently) until 1871.
  • The Scot, Mudie, like Matthew, was born in Forefarshire Scotland
  • Mudie, a prolific author   , worked worked energetically for burgh reform with R. S. Rintoul   , editor of the radical Dundee Advertiser - a newspaper that was very kind to Patrick Matthew - giving him a voice when others would not.
  • Mudie was a friend and twice co-author with Blyth - the naturalist who most assisted and influenced Darwin pre-Orign. And Blyth's two early papers on species variety - that so influenced Darwin - were edited by John Loudon who reviewed Matthew's 1831 book in 1832 and remarked that it may have had something original to say on "The Origin of Species".
  • Mudie died in 1842 - leaving his second wife (daughter of a captain in the East India Company) penniless. One report    describes him as an intemperate spendthrift worn out too early by excessive intellectual endeavour and poverty.
  • The highly respected anthropologist and science historian Loren Eiseley (1979, p. 214) spotted in a different 1832 publication of Mudie's that this particular Scot had somehow grasped, something, quite significant:

'Long ago when Darwin was still a youth aboard the Beagle, the Naturalist Robert Mudie, faithful to his century, had written:

' "There is a law that maintains the species." Scarcely had he made this assertion before he was busy explaining that all cultivated plants or animals were more or less monsters and that of the appearance of their parentage we know little or nothing. Even of wild forms he ends by hinting ambiguously of the emergence of species "altogether new". Finally he verges on complete heresy. "There is something," he almost whispers, "of the same kind in human beings," '


Eiseley was citing and quoting from: Mudie, R. (1832) A Popular Guide to the Observation of Nature. Whitaker, Constable's Miscellany of Original and Selected Publications of Literature, Science & the Arts. Vol. LXXVII Teacher and Co,     London   And Waugh and Innes.Edinburgh. pp. 366-371   . The text, below, from his book, is what Mudie has to say about humans breeding animals and plants under culture versus nature's process of "breeding" them in the wild ( 'artificial versus natural selection') - as it was understood in general terms - before Mendel's 1856-1863 research work on sweat peas was presented as a paper in 1865 - and published in 1866    apparently, yet again 'independently' almost grasped by Darwin (1866)    in the year of its publication year - no less! Darwin, even used sweet peas, the exact same plant types as Mendel - despite supposedly never having read it (Note it is apparently fallaciously claimed that there a was a rare 1866 re-print of Mendel's paper discovered in Darwin's library (see Ezra Galun on page 10   ) - rebutted by Mario Livio on page 53 of his book .


There is the no evidence in his surviving correspondence, or from his library, that Darwin had read Mendel's prior-published theory before he wrote on the same tops to Wallace. Livio does prove that Darwin - a year before his death - did have a copy of another much later (1881) book containing an explanation of Mendel's discovery (even though the edges of the pages - the book being new - were uncut, Darwin could have read it. But it hardly matters.


Darwin, who took German lessons, and was a well known admitted Duffer at mathematics, almost understood, although from a different research approach, the bombshell significance of Mendel's prior published ideas. However, it was to be years later (after his death) that the scientific world would come to fully understand Mendel's genius. Here then a case of Darwin yet again 'independently' discovering (although not quite understanding in this case) yet another prior-published bombshell discovery! At least so runs the so-called "majority view" - more Interestingly and veraciously, my IDD research method throws up some very fascinating results about who actually cited Mendel's (1866) work pre the 1890's and, no doubt, were anyone to try it, would discover even more fascinating results regarding who was apparently first to be second with apparently unique Mendelisms. But I digress. Back to Mudie.


In his own earlier book of 1832, Mudie writes a great deal of text that focuses upon Matthew's topic of forest trees and the effects upon wood of the natural and cultivated circumstances in which it grows. In what follows, we can see his general insights into the effect of time and environmental change on varieties leading to new species and his comparison of this with varietal change under human culture:


Mudie (1832) Page 368:


‘If we are to observe nature, therefore, we must go to the wilds, because, in all cultivated productions, there are secondary characters produced by the artificial treatment, and we have no means of observing a distinction between these, and those which the same individual would have displayed, had it been left to a completely natural state. The longer that the race has been under the domestication and culture, the changes are of course the greater. So much is that the case that in very many both of the plants and animals that have been in a state of domestication since the earliest times of which we have any record, we know nothing with certainty about the parent races in their wild state. As to the species, or if you will the genus we can be certain. The domestic horse has not been cultivated out of an animal with cloven hoofs and horns; and the domestic sheep has never been bred out of any of the ox tribe. So also wheat and barley have not been cultivated out of any species of pulse, neither have Windsor beans at any time been grasses. But within some such limits as these our certain information lies; and for aught we know the parent race may, in its wild state, be before our eyes every day and yet we may not have the means of knowing that it is so. The breeding artificially has been going on for at least three thousand years…’


Mudie (1832) Pages 369-370:


'But there is another difficulty. When great changes are made on the surface of a country, as when forests are changed into open land, and marshes into corn fields, or any other change that is considerable, the changes of the climate must correspond; and as the wild productions are very much affected by that, they must also undergo changes; and these changes may in time amount to the entire extinction of some of the old tribes, both of plants and of animals, the modification of others to the full extent that the hereditary specific characters admit, and the introduction of not varieties only but of species altogether new.

That not only may but must have been the case. The productions of soils and climates are as varied as these are; and when a change takes place in either of these, if the living productions cannot alter their habits so as to accommodate themselves to the change there is no alternative, but they must perish.'


Mudie (1832) seemed to be recommending that humans engage in trying to approximate a kind of natural process of selection (370-371):


“Cultivation itself will deteriorate, and in time destroy races, if the same race and the same mode of culture be pursued amid general change. Our own times are times of very rapid change, and, upon the whole, of improvement; we dare not, without the certainty of their falling off, continue the same stock and the same seed corn, season after season, and age after age, as was done by our forefathers. The general change of the country, must have change and not mere succession, in that which we cultivate; and thus we must cross the breeds of our animals, and remove the seeds and plants of our vegetables from district to district. There is something of the same kind in human beings..”

Had Mudie read his Forefarshire neighbor's book, published the year before one of his own replicated a unique Matthewism and another touched upon the same heresy?


Did he influence Blyth with some type of Mathewian knowledge contamination so that Blyth's work - that so significantly influenced Darwin - infected Darwin's brain?


Was Blyth more likely than not double-dosed with Matthewian knowledge via his editor Loudon, who reviewed Matthew's book, as well as by Mudie?


I would say so.


What think you Dear Reader? In all probability, can all of this be mere coincidence?


The Case of David Low


  • The Scot Professor David Low of Edinburgh University was apparently twice first to replicate apparently unique Matthewisms.
  • In his book Elements of Practical Agriculture (1834) Low replicated the phrase "Long continued selection".
  • In his book On Landed Property and the Economy of Estates (1844) Low replicated the phrase "Overpowering the less".
  • In his book ‘On Landed Property, and the Economy of Estates’ (1844), on page 546, where The Matthewism 'overpowering the less' is replicated, Low replicated Matthew’s exclusive theme that trees grown by means of artificial selection in nurseries were inferior to those naturally selected by nature. As it was understood at the time, this is what we might call the "Artificial versus Natural Selection Analogy".


The Artificial versus Natural Selection Analogy


1. 'Matthew (1831 pp. 307-308) wrote:


‘The use of the infinite seedling varieties in the families of plants, even in those in a state of nature, differing in luxuriance of growth and local adaptation, seems to be to give one individual (the strongest best circumstance-suited) superiority over others of its kind around, that it may, by overtopping and smothering them, procure room for full extension, and thus affording, at the same time, a continual selection of the strongest, best circumstance suited for reproduction. Man's interference, by preventing this natural process of selection among plants, independent of the wider range of circumstances to which he introduces them, has increased the difference in varieties, particularly in the more domesticated kinds…'


2. Low (1844) wrote:


‘The Wild Pine attains its greatest perfection of growth and form in the colder countries, and on the older rock formations. It is in its native regions of granite, gneiss and the allied deposits, that it grows in extended forests over hundreds of leagues, overpowering the less robust species. When transplanted to the lower plains and subjected to culture, it loses so much of the aspect and characters of the noble original, as scarcely to appear the same. No change can be greater to the habits of a plant than the transportation of this child of the mountain to the shelter and cultivated soil of the nursery; and when the seeds of these cultivated trees are collected and sown again, the progeny diverges more and more from the parent type. Hence one of the reasons why so many worthless plantations of pine appear in the plains of England and Scotland, and why so much discredit has become attached to the culture of the species.’ 


3. Darwin (1844 - unpublished essay) wrote:


‘In the case of forest trees raised in nurseries, which vary more than the same trees do in their aboriginal forests, the cause would seem to lie in their not having to struggle against other trees and weeds, which in their natural state doubtless would limit the conditions of their existence…’


4. Wallace (1858 Ternate paper) wrote:


‘…those that prolong their existence can only be the most perfect in health and vigour - those who are best able to obtain food regularly, and avoid their numerous enemies. It is, as we commenced by remarking, "a struggle for existence," in which the weakest and least perfectly organized must always succumb.’ [And]: ‘We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, that true balance of organization, by means of which alone an animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and continue its race.’


Other Replications


  • Charles Darwin also replicated the exact same Matthewism "long continued selection". in his unpublished 1842 and 1844 essays, only, unlike Low, Darwin wrote it without the hyphen - just as Matthew first coined it in 1831.
  • Loren Eiseley (1979) was convinced    that Darwin's (1844 - private essay) replication of Matthew's artificial selection analogous explanatory example of the inferiority of trees selected in nurseries, compared to those selected naturally in nature, was taken from Matthew's unique arboricultural expert and unique use of that example to explain natural selection in his book of 1831    . However, what Eiseley also never discovered - as once again I uniquely have - is that David Low had most definitely read Matthew's book because he took so much unique content from it, including unique Matthewian terms, and was first to replicate (without citation) Matthew's unique prior-published, artificial selection, nursery grown trees analogue, in his own book of 1844 .

Social Connections



Darwin's 'known knowledge' of Low


  • Darwin's far from comprehensive notebooks of books he wanted to read and books he read have no record of Low's books that contain two apparently unique Matthewisms, which Low was apparently first to replicate. However thosenotebooks    do record the following from Darwin: "Advertised. David Low “Treatise on Domestic Animals”; also Illustrations of the Domestic animals of Gt. Britain [D. Low 1842]. must be read carefully." Strangely, or not as the case may be, given that he recommended Low to the Royal Society, there is also no correspondence to or from Low in the much decimated Darwin correspondence archive.


Links to Matthew


  • Low and Matthew shared the same London publisher - Longman and Co (e.g. here   ) and Low also shared Matthew's Black's of Edinburgh publisher    . Indeed, Matthew's 1831 book was published by Blacks of Edinburgh and Longman and Co of London - exactly as was Low's (1847) fifth edition of The Elements of Practical Agriculture.


Low died in May 1859, six months before Darwin's Origin of Species was first published. He is buried in relative obscurity.


 

Nullius in Verba


Is it more likely than not, given all of this new found information, and weighing it all together, that Matthew influenced Darwin - indirectly - though Low? I would say so. What about you Dear Reader?


And as if all of that is not enough to confirm the potential importance and validity of the F2b2 hypothesis, just see what the new technology that underpins it detected about Darwin's great friend and mentor Charles Lyell: here.


No wonder desperate Darwinists, without even addressing the actual findings, have fallen foul of the Semmelweis Reflex by seeking to dismiss these bombshell findings as based on an invalid research method! Read my position paper {here}.


Furthermore, the obscene harasser and cyberstalker, Derry has added to the Wikipedia page on Patrick Matthew Dishonest Dagg The Plagiarist's absolute nonsense and misleading lying stupidity from his moronic blog site that I mistake the subject matter of the books turned up by the IDD method in this first to be second with unique Matthewisms research for things they are not 


Conclusion


The F2b2 hypothesis might appear implausible and fraught with uncertainties, but look what it found for us. Robert Mudie and David Low are much neglected scholars who have been given no place in the story of the discovery of natural selection until now.


Thanks to the remarkable IDD method, we need now to look deeper into their work and discover more about what they wrote and who they met and influenced.


Were they influenced by Matthew? I think so. Did they in turn influence Darwin, directly and/or indirectly through others with what had influenced them from Mathew's work? I think it far more likely than not.


A full list of apparently unique Matthewisms that have been apparently first replicated by named authors can be found on the "Matthewisms" page on Patrickmatthew.com    


The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.