Nehru's Word: Darwin and the triumph of science

The so-called ‘rationalisation’ of textbooks by the NCERT, which has been termed by one commentator as the ‘brutalisation’ of textbooks, has (among many other things) led to the dropping of a whole chapter on Darwin and the theory of evolution.

In addition, chapters on the Industrial Revolution, protest movements, the Mughals, the periodic table in chemistry—to give only a few examples—have been omitted, in the name of ‘lightening the load’. The motivation, however, appears to emanate from a political agenda which is anti-science, communal and biased against critical thought.

Here is the first part of an essay on Darwin and the triumph of science that Jawaharlal Nehru wrote for his daughter in 1933.

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"The scientists are the miracle-workers of today, and they have influence and honour. This was not so before the 19th century. In the earlier centuries a scientist’s life was a risky affair in Europe and sometimes ended at the stake.

I have told you of how Giordano Bruno was burnt in Rome by the church. A few years later, in the 17th century, Galileo came very near the stake because he had stated that the earth went round the sun. He escaped being burnt for heresy because he apologised and withdrew his previous statements.

In this way the church in Europe was always coming into conflict with science and trying to suppress new ideas. Organised religion, in Europe or elsewhere, has various dogmas attached to it which its followers are supposed to accept without doubt or questioning. Science has a very different way of looking at things. It takes nothing for granted and has, or ought to have, no dogmas. It seeks to encourage an open mind and tries to reach truth by repeated experiment. This outlook is obviously very different from the religious outlook, and it is not surprising that there was frequent conflict between the two.

Experiments of various kinds have, I suppose, been carried on by different peoples in all ages. In ancient India, it is said that chemistry and surgery were fairly advanced, and this could only have been so after a great deal of experimenting. The old Greeks also experimented to some extent.

As for the Chinese, recently I read a most astonishing account, which gave extracts from Chinese writers of 1,500 years ago, showing that they knew of the theory of evolution, and of the circulation of the blood through the body, and that Chinese surgeons gave anaesthetics. But we do not know enough about these times to justify any conclusions.

If the ancient civilisations had discovered these methods, why did they forget them later? And why did they not make greater progress? Or was it that they did not attach enough importance to this kind of progress? Many interesting questions arise, but we have no materials to answer them.

The real scientific method, however, developed gradually in Europe, and among the greatest names in the history of science is that of the Englishman Isaac Newton, who lived from 1642 to 1727.

Newton explained the law of gravitation, that is, of how things fall; and with the help of this, and other laws which had been discovered, he explained the movements of the sun and the planets. Everything, both big and small, seemed to be explained by his theories, and he received great honour.

The spirit of science was gaining on the dogmatic spirit of the church. It could no longer be put down or its votaries sent to the stake….

The 18th century in Europe, you will remember, was the century when rationalism spread among the educated classes. It was the century of Voltaire and Rousseau and many other able Frenchmen who wrote on all manner of subjects and created a ferment in the minds of the people. The great French Revolution was being hatched in the womb of the century. This rationalistic outlook fitted in with the scientific outlook, and both opposed the dogmatic outlook of the church.

The 19th century, I have told you, was, among other things, the century of science. The Industrial Revolution, the Mechanical Revolution, and the amazing changes in the methods of transport, were all due to science. The numerous factories had changed the methods of production; railways and steamships had suddenly narrowed the world ; the electric telegraph was an even greater wonder…

In the middle of the century, in 1859, a book was published in England which brought the conflict between the dogmatic and the scientific outlook to a head. This book was The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. Darwin is not among the very great scientists; there was nothing very new in what he said. Other geologists and naturalists had been at work before Darwin, and had gathered much material.

Nonetheless, Darwin’s book was epoch-making; it produced a vast impression and helped in changing the social outlook more than any other scientific work. It resulted in a mental earthquake and made Darwin famous.

Darwin had wandered about in South America and the Pacific as a naturalist and had collected an enormous amount of material and data. He used this to show how each species of animals had changed and developed by natural selection. Many people had thought till then that every species or kind of animal, including man, had been separately created by God, and had remained apart and unchangeable since then—that is to say that one species could not become another.

Darwin showed, by a mass of actual examples, that species did change from one to another, and that this was the normal method of development. These changes took place by natural selection. A slight variation in a species, if it happened to be profitable to it in any way or helped it to survive others, would gradually lead to a permanent change, as obviously more of this varied species would survive.

After a while this varied species would be in the majority and would swamp the others. In this way changes and variations would creep in, one after the other, and after some time there would be an almost new species produced. So, in course of time many new species would arise by this process of survival of the fittest by natural selection.

This would apply to plants and animals, and even man. It is possible, according to this theory, that there might be a common ancestor of all the various plant and animal species we see today.

A few years later Darwin published another book, The Descent of Man, in which he applied his theory to man. This idea of evolution and of natural selection is accepted by most people now, though not exactly in the way Darwin and his followers put it forward.

Indeed, it is quite a common thing for people to apply this principle of selection artificially to the breeding of animals and the cultivation of plants and fruits and flowers. Many of the prized animals and plants today are new species, artificially created.”

(Selected and edited by Mridula Mukherjee, former Professor of history at JNU and former director of Nehru Memorial Museum & Library)