As for Darwin - He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight.
Psalm 101:7
"The first unofficial critic of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was
Whitwell Elwin, editor of the journal Quarterly Review,
selected by Darwin’s publishing house to vet his manuscript in advance
of possible publication.
Elwin memorably advised against publication on
the grounds that the work was “a wild and foolish piece of imagination”
whose author would have been better advised to omit his speculative
flights and confine himself to the subject of pigeons. Elwin’s
magnificent bathos was in the event disregarded by the press’s trustees
who went on to publish regardless. However, Elwin’s negative verdict was
subsequently supported in many essentials by the great majority of
formal reviewers, as David Hull has documented.
Yet neither
Elwin nor the official reviewers were the first to pass judgement on
Darwin’s ideas, for they had all been preceded by an Irish academic:
Professor Samuel Haughton.
Darwin reports Haughton’s verdict as having been that “all that was new in there was false, and what was true was old.” EvolutionNews&Views
