Patrick Matthew
Matthew's Politics
Matthew was a libertarian royalist Chartist, and was in 1839 a Scottish representative of that pre-socialist libertarian political reform movement. He resigned his position because he disagreed with
talk of violent revolution.
Matthew's 1831 book, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, wove his unique discovery of natural selection in with his political ideals to explain that society was acting like artificial selection in selecting poor human stock to succeed in society at the expense of better human specimens more fitted to prestigious positions. In this sense, he effectively saw that the artificial system of society was not allowing the fittest to prevail. His book warned of the consequences, and was not only heretical, in that it trespassed on the domain of natural theology in terms of the origin of species, it was seditious to boot! Both of these highly controversial traits were criticized in reviews of his book - such as the one in The United Services Journal and Naval and Military Magazine 1831. p. 457):
'In thus testifying our hearty approbation of the author, it is strictly in his capacity of a forest ranger, where he is original bold, and evidently experienced in all the arcana of the parentage, birth and education of trees. But we disclaim participation in his ruminations on the law of Nature, or on the outrages committed upon reason and justice by our burthens of hereditary nobility, entailed property, and insane enactments.'
The hostile anonymous reviewer of the Edinburgh Literary Journal (1831, p, 2) had this to say:
'The entire tract resembles a new quack medicine, full of high stimulants, ignorantly and not safely combined, and which, till known and analyzed, might prove dangerous as well as attractive to young patients (ie young planters and country gentlemen)...'
Moreover, under the laws passed by Pitt in the 18th century, due to fear of violent revolution, this meant that scientific societies were forbidden to discuss ideas of the kind Matthew shared. See, for example, Uglow's (2002: p. 464) explanation of what very clearly happened in the year 1794:
''Pitt passed his notorious Two Acts against 'Seditious Meetings' and 'Treasonable Practices': the former hit particularly at the institutional societies, requiring them to be licensed and proscribing discussion of religion or politics'.
These laws were enshrined by the conventions and rules of all British scientific associations, such as the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, so that discussions could not be held on the topics of politics, religion or news. Matthew's book was about all three and so he certainly did himself no favours if he wished for his ideas to be discussed by the 19th century gentlemen of science.
The naturalist, John Loudon who reviewed Matthew's book in 1831 mentioned its originality on "the origin of species" no less and was possibly alluding to its heresy and sedition when he wrote:
'...for want of practice in writing, he has produced a book which we should be sorry should be absent from our library.'
Matthew's second book 'Emigration Fields' , published in 1839, took his 'survival of the most circumstance suited' natural selection ideas forward for the British to emigrate to countries such as New Zealand in order to find new ecological and create new social niches where they could subdue, intermix with and dominate the indigenous population.
And so we can see that Matthew fully understood the political implications of his discovery of the 'natural process of selection' when he first originated it in print in 1831. Forty eight years later, in 1879, Darwin wrote to the German, Dr Scherzer:
'What a foolish idea seems to prevail in Germany on the connection between Socialism and Evolution through Natural Selection.'
At the time of writing this letter is not yet available on the Darwin Correspondence Project. The digitized version of Darwin's biography, edited by his son Francis, misspells, by typo, Scherzer as 'cherzer'.
Sir Gavin de Beer (1962) p.330 writes in regard to this letter:
'Darwin, to the end of his days, never understood the political overtones which, whether he liked it or not, were attached to his work.'
Where the truth lies, when we are dealing with a man such as Darwin - a proven self-serving serial liar, is another matter altogether. For one thing, Royal Society Darwin Medal Winner de Beer was a typically biased and credulous Darwin worshipping pseudoscholar, who looked no further than the end of Darwin's lying pen on the question of who read Matthew's ideas before Darwin replicated them and then lied by claiming they had been unread before 1860. We do know for an absolute fact, from what Darwin wrote, that he had read the whole of Matthew's book after Matthew had claimed priority for his discovery in the Gardener's Chronicle in 1860. How then could Darwin have missed the political implications so often clearly stated? For example:
Matthew (1831, p. 365):
'The law of entail, necessary to hereditary nobility, is an outrage on this law of nature which she will no pass unavenged—a law which has the most debasing influence upon the energies of a people, and will sooner or later lead to general subversion…'
And (Matthew 1831, p. 390):
'…the great mass of the present population requiring no guidance from a particular class of feudal lords, will not continue to tolerate any hereditary claims of authority of one portion of the population over their fellow-men; nor any laws to keep up rank and wealth corresponding to this exclusive power. It would be wisdom in the noblesse of Europe to abolish every claim or law which serves to point them out a separate class, and, as quickly as possible, to merge themselves into the mass of the It is a law manifest in nature, that when the use of any thing is past, its use is no longer kept up.'
And we know for a fact that in 1862 Darwin read Matthew's letter in which Matthew spelled out his political approach to the study of natural selection:
'My line lies more in the political & social, Your's in tracing out the admirably balanced scheme of Nature all linked together in dependent connection—the vital endowed with a variation-power in accommodation to material change.'
Robert Chambers, a staunch anti-Chartism, educational liberal, who was notoriously fearful of the consequences of political emancipation of the working classes was one of seven naturalists newly discovered (Sutton 2014 and 2017) to have cited Matthew's (1831) book pre 1858. He was a friend and correspondent of Darwin, and, like Lyell - Darwins great mentor, a member of the Edinburgh Geological Society. Their private correspondence reveals that Both Darwin and Lyell knew that Chambers was the anonymous author of the heretical Vestiges of Creation - the book that notoriously 'put evolution in the air' in the mid 19th century and which was Wallace's greatest influence.
In 1848 Chambers stood for political election. He was supported in that campaign by none other than Adam Black - Patrick Matthew's publisher - who extensively advertised Matthew's book and its subject matter on species.
The real history of the discovery of natural selection and the political suppression of Patrick Matthew's priority for his prior published hypothesis of natural selection is no conspiracy theory. Rather, it is simply, newly discovered, fact-based, history.
Moreover, the reality of the circles that Mathew and Darwin both moved in are far more complex and interrelated than the simple, made-up, childish 'just so' stories told by biased Darwinists about Matthew being an obscure Scottish writer in order to lazily fill their knowledge gaps in the story of Matthew, Darwin and Wallace (e.g. Dawkins in Bryson 2010) about Matthew being simply an obscure Scottish writer of a 'manual on silviculture' in order to lazily fill their pseudoscholarly knowledge gaps . By way of further example, Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker petitioned Matthew's publisher Adam Black in his failed attempt in 1845 to get the chair of Botany at Edinburgh university. Darwin was livid that Hooker was not appointed.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Did Benjamin Franklin Influence Patrick Matthew?
I earlier (here) explored the likelihood that Matthew (1831) was influenced by Empedocles. In this blog post I explore the very probable influence of Benjamin Franklin.
Writers before me have concluded that Matthew most probably was influenced by the writings of Malthus - the man who both Darwin and Wallace claimed as a most important influence on their "own" work. Dempster (1983, p. 51) writes that both Malthus and Paley were influenced by Franklin's essay of 1755. From that cause, it is worth looking at what Franklin wrote that may have influenced Matthew directly, or else indirectly through knowledge contamination.
In 1751, Franklin penned an essay that was finally published in Boston, USA, in 1755. It is entitled: Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries.
The relevant sections of Franklin's essay are the very final ones 22 to 24:
22. There is in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants
or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering
with each others means of subsistence. Was the face of the earth
vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread
with one kind only; as, for instance, with Fennel; and were it empty
of other inhabitants, it might in a few Ages be replenish d from one
nation only; as for Instance, with Englishmen. Thus there are
suppos d to be now upwards of One Million English Souls in North
America, (tho tis thought scarce 80,000 have been brought over
sea) and yet perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather
many more, on Account of the employment the Colonies afford to
manufacturers at home. This million doubling, suppose but once
in twenty-five years, will in another century be more than the peo
ple of England, and the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on
this side the water. What an accession of Power to the British
empire by the Sea as well as Land! What increase of trade and navi
gation! What numbers of ships and seamen! We have been here
but little more than one hundred years, and yet the force of our
Privateers in the late war, united, was greater, both in men and
guns, than that of the whole British Navy in Queen Elizabeth s time.
How important an affair then to Britain, is the present treaty for
settling the bounds between her Colonies and the French, and how
careful should she be to secure room enough, since on the room de
pends so much the increase of her people?
OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INCREASE OF MANKIND
23. In fine, A nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take
away a limb, its place is soon supply d; cut it in two, and each de
ficient part shall speedily grow out of the part remaining. Thus
if you have room and subsistence enough, as you may by dividing
make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one make ten nations,
equally populous and powerful; or rather, increase a nation ten fold
in numbers and strength.
And since detachments of English horn Britain sent to America,
will have their places at home so soon supply d and increase so large
ly here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into
our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages
and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania,
founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly
be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them,
and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they
can acquire our complexion?
24. Which leads me to add one remark: That the number
of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small.
All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (ex
clusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Span
iards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what
we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons
only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of
white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers
were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our
planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of
our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars
or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its
people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in Ameri
ca, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks
and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps
I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of
partiality is natural to Mankind.
If these three sections of Franklin's (1755) essay, with what Zirkle (1941) saw as the texts that influenced Malthus, that so by 'knowledge contamination' influenced Darwin (and also Wallace) did not inspire Matthew to write "On Naval Timber" in 1831 and "Emigration Fields" in 1839 then the coincidences are astounding. For Franklin writes on so many of Matthew's key themes: (1) A belief in the superiority of the Saxon's (2) The importance of trade and navigation, (3) The voracious need of the British to obtain timber (4) The fact that some varieties of the human species suffer overcrowding and so need to emigrate so as not to be 'interfering with each other's means of subsistence' (5) The likelihood that by emigration Anglo Saxon's would overtop existing populations in colonies. (6) The ability for any species to have an ecological power of occupancy in the most circumstance suited environment - namely one that is supportive of life and devoid of superior competitors (think Dodo - until humans turned up).
Patrick Matthew was most probably influenced by Erasmus Darwin and by William Lawrence.
Read the evidence: here
A Blemish in the Darling Darwin
“When favourite speculations have been long indulged, and much pains have been bestowed on them, they are viewed with that parental partiality, which cannot bear to hear of faults in the object of its attachment. The mere doubt of an impartial observer is offensive ; and the discovery of anything like a blemish in the darling, is not only ascribed to an entire want of discrimination and judgment, but resented as an injury." William Lawrence 1819
Patrick Matthew: the only true originator of the theory of macro evolution by natural selection
BOMBSHELL!
Patrick Matthew (1831) was the first to fully explain natural selection as new species branching from a common ancestor by way of nature selecting varieties that were best circumstance suited. He even uniquely called it: 'the natural process of selection'. A term Darwin (1859) would uniquely four word shuffle into 'process of natural selection'.
The Myth of Darwin's Honesty is Bust by the Facts
Cast iron proof that Charles Darwin, in collusion with his best friend and botanical mentor Joseph Hooker, lied in the Gardener's Chronicle when he wrote in 1860 that apparently no naturalist had read Matthew's (1831) prior-published ideas, and further lied when he wrote in the third edition of the Origin of Species (1861), and every edition thereafter, that Matthew's unique ideas had passed unnoticed until 1860.
Charles Darwin
Joseph Hooker
Prior to the publication of this book, it was universally believed that Charles Darwin told the truth when he wrote in 1860 that apparently no naturalist had read Patrick Matthew's 1831 book, which contained the full theory of natural selection.
Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret is the hard-fact-led mythbusting book that re-wrote the history of the discovery of natural selection with new BigData made discoveries of the once hidden books that reveal who Darwin and Wallace knew who really did read Patrick Matthew's prior publication of the full theory of natural selection before Darwin and Wallace supposedly 'independently' replicated it in 1858 with, supposedly, no knowledge of what Matthew had discovered that their friends and influencers had read and actually cited in the literature before influencing them on the same topic!
Nullius is available on Amazon
Hard Facts and Rational Argument
Every Darwinist argument against the importance of the New Data in Nulius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret can be rebutted with facts and reason. Here.
Read why biased Darwinists, named for Charles Darwin, are unsurprisingly found-out by their poor scholarship, to be unfit to tell the veracious story of the discovery of natural selection. Here.
Why was the New Data detected by a social scientist and not by an expert Darwinist biologist?
For 155 years, following the publication of Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species, until Sutton's (2014) Nullius in Verba, Darwinists were unobservant of the damning evidence in the literature. They had seen only what they were taught to expect about their deified namesake. The totaly unexpected evidence, that they are named for a plagiarizing science fraudster, evaded them like an optical illusion.
One needs to retain the unblinking observancy of a curious child, whilst exercising an open mind. To succeed, it is necessary to create a physical, social and personally cognitive research environment in which things can happen and where significant new data can be searched for, detected, followed-up with intuitive instinct and appreciated. In such an environment, it is important to know and fully exploit the potential of the tools that facilitate your research and to use them in search for the unusual.
You should be inspired, tenaciously powered and moderated by the joyful application of your diligent and acute, unbiased, curiosity and observation skills.
In the words of Alexander Fleming (1959), in order to first make game changing discoveries, one should:
'Work hard, work well, do not clutter up the mind too much with precedents, and be prepared to accept such good fortune as the gods offer...'
If it happens that you find something big, to intuitively appreciate the 'bombshell' significance of your newly discovered hard facts is, at the very outset at least, an altogether more subjective matter. I don't think such appreciation is something that can be taught to everyone. One, essentially, needs the gift of an eye to notice and a mind to grasp what it means.
To argue for and disseminate the significance of your discovery, in the face of an entrenched, powerful, hostile, and self-interested 'expert' 'majority view', requires personal and intellectual mettle and sense of moral integrity for promoting fact-led progress that is too often lacking in the world.
For the social scientist, indeed, for any scientist, it is a moral duty to reveal myths and fallacies and to share as widely as possible the newly discovered facts that disconfirm them.
I know exactly what I have uniquely discovered with my carefully planned and executed research design and innovative ID research method. Therefore, I know its originality and great importance in the history of scientific discovery.
The New Data of Wallace's sly correspondence record tampering dishonesty and Darwin's 100 per cent proven audacious self-serving lies, when added to the newly discovered fact that highly influential naturalists, who Darwin and Wallace knew, read and then cited Matthew's (1831) book before Darwin and Wallace replicated the bombshell ideas in it - followed by their own fallacious defence that before 1860 no naturalist had read those prior-published ideas - re-writes, significantly, the history of the discovery of natural selection.
Macro evolution by natural selection is, arguably, the most important scientific discovery of all time. The great importance of this theory underpins the significance of the New Data for veracious scientific progress in our knowledge of how such great scientific discoveries are made.
The Darwinist pseudo scholarly version of the history of the discovery of natural selection is about turning fallacious statements, made by their namesake, into unshakable truths through the power of institutions and the passage of time. Here.
Further reading on the Charles Darwin and Patrick Matthew Supermyth can be found on Supermyths.com HERE
THE ANSWER IS 30
And so we see that the science problem of Darwin's and Wallace's claim of miraculous virgin brained dual independent conception of a prior published theory, which both admitted was essentially the same as their own, and which Wallace wrote was even more complete, is solved by disproving the consensus that 0 people read Matthew's theory before they replicated it. Hence, any notion that mysterious forces govern the affairs of humans with otherwise amazing improbable coincidences is disproven in this case. The solution to this particular virgin conception problem is 30, which is the difference between 0 and 30. Hence, there were 30 routes for knowledge contamination to directly or indirectly prior-impregnate the brains of Darwin and Wallace with Matthew's bombshell breakthrough before they replicated it and then each claimed it as their own original idea.
From this example, we can learn how to solve the science problem of the Christian belief claim in the virgin conception of Mary with Jesus. All we need to find out is how many probably fertile human males were in a position to impregnate her.