It would now seem that there was a side to the English naturalist Charles Darwin that eluded those who wrote about his life for all the years that passed since his death, on April 19th, 1882. A new paper, which has been accepted for publication in the scientific journal Endeavor, argues that his wife Emma's piano playing significantly influenced the scientist's perception of the world, and might have led to the creation of at least two of his most important books, including “On the Origins of Species.” This work drastically influenced the naturalist thinking of the time, and offered an alternative to the church's intelligent design (ID) explanation of things.
“The long-term marital dance of Emma and Charles Darwin was set to the routine beat of an almost daily piano recital; music was central to home life and a panacea after a hard day's work, or often when not feeling well,” Discovery News Julian Derry, who is a University of Edinburg Institute of Evolutionary Biology researcher, tells. He has had access to Emma Darwin's diary, and has formulated his hypothesis based on the information he extracted from those notes.
The investigator says that after the couple got married, in 1839, they rarely lived apart from each other. In fact, after carefully reviewing both the diary and other documents, including mail, he shares that recitals at the family's residence took place nearly every night, for leisure, or even when the scientist was sick. He believes that this exposure to music may have helped Darwin put his thoughts in order, so as to be able to come up with the theory that would revolutionize biology.
“I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite gender,” Darwin wrote in “The Descent of Man.” Derry believes that this type of thinking was heavily influenced by the naturalist's nightly musical auditions, which he attended while lying back comfortably on his living room sofa. “Darwin's idea was that the organs for sound production in early humans could have been precursory to more complex verbal communication, namely language,” Derry adds.
“If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited – and I think it can be shown that this does sometimes happen – then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as to not be distinguished,” Darwin also wrote, after noticing that his wife's piano playing talent had been transmitted to one of their ten children.
“No more would Darwin compromise with the past: natural theology was dead for him, and he would develop his theory in a way that would throw down the gauntlet to those who were still trusting in the old platitudes,” Queen's University in Belfast professor of anthropological studies and Darwin expert Peter Bowler concludes.
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