The Lying Stones of Marrakech (33 page)

Owen opposed progressionistic evolution for a complex set of reasons. First of all, this opinion endeared him to his patrons, and gave him leverage against his enemies. William Buckland, Owen's chief supporter, had used his Bridgewater Treatise of 1836 to argue against evolutionary progressionism by citing the excellent design of ancient beasts that should have been crude and primitive by virtue of their primeval age. Buckland invoked both
Megalosaurus
and
Iguanodon
to
advance this argument (though these genera had not yet been designated as dinosaurs).

In his preface, Buckland announced an intention to show that “the phenomena of Geology are decidedly opposed” to “the derivation of existing systems of organic life… by gradual transmutation of one species into another.” He then argued that the superb design of ancient organisms proved the constant superintendence of a loving deity, rather than a natural process of increasing excellence from initial crudity to current complexity. According to Buckland, the superb design of giant Mesozoic reptiles “shows that even in those distant eras, the same care of the common Creator, which we witness in the mechanism of our own bodies… was extended to the structure of creatures, that at first sight seem made up only of monstrosities.” He then inferred God's direct benevolence from the excellent adaptation of
Iguanodon
teeth to a herbivorous lifestyle: we cannot
“view
such examples of mechanical contrivance, united with so much economy of expenditure… without feeling a profound conviction that all this adjustment has resulted from design and high intelligence.” In his 1842 report, Owen dutifully quoted all these key statements about dinosaurian excellence as proof of God's commanding love and wisdom, while copiously citing and praising Buckland as his source of insight.

This defense of natural theology and attack upon evolutionary progressionism also positioned Owen well against his enemies. Owen denigrated the amateur and bucolic Mantell as much as he revered his urbane professional patron Buckland, but this irrelevant spat centered on social rather than ideological issues. In London, Owen faced one principal enemy at this early stage of his career, when advance to domination seemed most precarious—the newly appointed professor of zoology at University College London: Robert E. Grant.

Grant (1793—1874) ended up in disgrace and poverty for reasons that remain unresolved and more than a little mysterious
*
But, in the late 1830s, Grant (who had just moved south from Edinburgh) enjoyed prominence as a newly leading light in London's zoological circles. He also became Owen's obvious and only rival for primacy. Grant had published an excellent and highly respected series of papers on the biology and classification of “lower” invertebrates, and he held advantages of age and experience over Owen.

But Grant was also a political radical, a man of few social graces, and—more relevantly—the most prominent public supporter of evolutionary progressionism in Great Britain. (In a wonderful tale for another time—and a primary illustration
for the sociological principle of six degrees of separation, and the general doctrine of “what goes 'round comes 'round”—Charles Darwin had spent an unhappy student year at Edinburgh before matriculating at Cambridge. As the only light in this dark time, Darwin became very close to Grant, who must be regarded as his first important academic mentor. Of course, Darwin knew about evolution from general readings (including the works of his own grandfather Erasmus, whom Grant also much admired), and Grant's Lamarckism stood in virtual antithesis to the principle of natural selection that Darwin would later develop. But the fact remains that Darwin first learned about evolution in a formal academic setting from Grant. The mystery of Grant only deepens when we learn that the impeccably generous and genial Darwin later gave Grant such short shrift. He apparently never visited his old mentor when the two men lived in London, literally at a stone's throw of separation, after Darwin returned from the
Beagle
voyage. Moreover, Darwin's autobiography,written late in his life,contains only one short and begrudging paragraph about Grant, culminating in a single statement about Grant's evolutionism:“He one day, when we were walking together, burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind.”

Grant represented a threat and a power in 1842, and Owen used his anti-evolutionary argument about dinosaurs as an explicit weapon against this archrival. The nastiest statement in Owen's report on fossil reptiles records his unsubtle skewering of Grant's evolutionary views:

Does the hypothesis of the transmutation of species, by a march of progressive development occasioning a progressive ascent in the organic scale, afford any explanation of these surprising phenomena?… A slight survey of organic remains may, indeed, appear to support such views of the origin of animated species; but of no stream of science is it more necessary, than of Paleontology, to “drink deep or taste not.”

To illustrate the supposed superficiality and ignorance behind such false arguments for evolution, Owen then cites only an 1835 paper by Grant—thus clearly identifying the target of his jibes. Could anyone, moreover, make a more dismissive and scurrilous statement about a colleague than Owen's rejection of Grant by Alexander Pope's famous criterion (the subject of chapter 11):

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring
.

Owen's concluding section cites several arguments to buttress his antitrans-mutationist message—but dinosaurs take the stand as his star and culminating witnesses. Owen, following a standard formulation of his generation, not a unique insight or an idiosyncratic ordering, makes a primary distinction between an evolutionary version of progressionism—where each lineage moves gradually, inexorably, and unidirectionally toward greater complexity and increasing excellence of design—and the creationist style of progressionism espoused by Buckland and other natural theologians—where God creates more complex organisms for each new geological age, but the highest forms of one period do not evolve into dominant creatures of the next age.

(To rebut the obvious objection that God could then be viewed as a humbler who couldn't get things right at the outset, and then had to use all of geological time for practice runs, Buckland and company—including Owen in the final paragraphs of his 1842 report—argued that God always creates organisms with optimal adaptations for the environments of each geological period. But these environments change in a directional manner, requiring a progressive advance of organic architecture to maintain a level of proper adaptation. Specifically, Buckland argued that climates had worsened through time as the earth cooled from an initially molten state. Cold-blooded torpor worked best on a hot and primitive earth, but a colder and tougher world required the creation of warm-blooded successors.)

Buckland and Owen held that the fossil record could act as an arbiter for this vital zoological debate; indeed, they both believed that paleontology might win primary importance as a science for this capacity to decide between evolutionary and creationist versions of progressionism. The two theories differed starkly in their predictions on a crucial matter: for transmutationists, each separate lineage should progress gradually and continuously through time, while the newly dominant form of each geological age should descend directly from the rulers of the last period. But for progressive creationists, an opposite pattern should prevail in the fossil record: individual lineages should show no definite pattern through time,and might even retrogress; while the dominant form of each age should arise by special creation, without ancestors and with no ties to the rulers of past ages.

With this background, we can finally grasp the central significance of Owen's decision to reconstruct dinosaurs as uniquely complicated beasts, more comparable in excellence of design with later (and advanced) mammals, than
with lowly reptiles of their own lineage. Such dinosaurian excellence refuted transmutation and supported progressive creationism on both crucial points. First, the high status of dinosaurs proved that reptiles had degenerated through time, as the old and best—the grand and glorious
Megalosaurus
and
Iguanodon
— gave way to the later and lowlier snakes, turdes, and lizards. Second, these highest reptiles did not evolve into the next dominant group of mammals, for small and primitive mammals had already been discovered in Mesozoic rocks that housed the remains of dinosaurs as well.

Owen clearly rejoiced (and gave thanks for the support thereby rendered to his patron Buckland) in the fearful greatness of his newly christened dinosaurs as a primary argument against the demonizing doctrine of progressive transmutation. He wrote in the concluding passages of his 1842 report:

If the present species of animals had resulted from progressive development and transmutation of former species, each class ought now to present its typical characters under their highest recognized conditions of organization: but the review of the characters of fossil Reptiles, taken in the present Report, proves that this is not the case. No reptile now exists which combines a complicated… dentition with limbs so proportionally large and strong, having… so long and complicated a sacrum as in the order
Dinosaurio
.The Megalosaurs and Iguanodons, rejoicing in these undeniably most perfect modifications of the Reptilian type, attained the greatest bulk, and must have played the most conspicuous parts, in their respective characters as devourers of animals and feeders upon vegetables, that this earth has ever witnessed in oviparious [egg-laying] and cold-blooded creatures.

Owen then closed his argument, and this entire section of his report, by using dinosaurs to support the second antitransmutationist principle as well:not only do dinosaurs illustrate a lack of progress within reptilian lineages, but they also demonstrate that higher mammals could not have evolved from dominant reptiles:

Thus, though a general progression may be discerned, the interruptions and faults, to use a geological phrase, negative
[sic]
the notion that the progression had been the result of self-developing energies adequate to a transmutation of specific characters;but, on the contrary,
support the conclusion that the modifications of osteological structure which characterize the extinct Reptiles, were originally impressed upon them at their creation, and have been neither derived from improvement of a lower,nor lost by progressive development into a higher type.

As a closing fillip and small(but pretty)footnote to this argument from the public record,I can also add a previously unknown affirmation for the centrality of antievolutionism as a primary motivation in Owen's designation of dinosaurs as “fearfully great.” Owen certainly stressed an antitransmutationist message in discoursing on the significance of dinosaurs. But how do we know that transmutation represented a live and general debate in the zoology of Owen's day—and not just a funny little side issue acting as a bee in Owen's own idiosyncratic bonnet? The public record does provide support for the generality.For example, the first full-scale defense of evolution written in English,the anonymously printed
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
(by the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers),became the literary sensation and hottest press item of 1844.

But I can add a small testimony from a personal source. Several years ago, I had the great good fortune to purchase, at a modest price before the hype of
Jurassic Park
sent dinosaur memorabilia through the financial roof, Buckland's personal copy of Owen's 1842 report. (This copy, inscribed to Buckland by Owen, and signed by Buckland in two places, bears the incorrect date of 1841, and must therefore belong to the original lot of twenty-five, printed for Owen's private distribution.) Buckland obviously read the document with some care, for he underlined many passages and wrote several marginal annotations. But the annotations follow a clear pattern: Buckland only highlights factual claims in his marginal notes; he never comments on theoretical or controverted points. Mostly, he just lists the taxonomic names of species under discussion, or the anatomical terms associated with Owen's immediate descriptions. For example, in Owen's section on dinosaurs, Buckland writes “sacrum” next to Owen's identification of fused sacral vertebrae as a defining character of dinosaurs. And he writes “28 feet” next to Owen's defense of this smaller length for
Iguanodon
.

Buckland breaks this pattern only once—to mark and emphasize Owen's discussion of dinosaurs as an argument against transmutation of species. Here, on page 196, Buckland writes the word “transmutation” in the margin—his only annotation for a theoretical point in the entire publication. Moreover, and in a manner that I can only call charming in our modern age of the 3M
Post-it, Buckland cut out a square of white paper and fastened it to page 197 by a single glob of marginal glue, thus marking Owen's section on evolution by slight projection of the square above the printed page when the book lies closed. Finally, Buckland again wrote the single word “Transmutation” on a loose, rectangular slip of paper that he must have inserted as a bookmark into Owen's report. Buckland, one of the leading English geologists of his time, evidently regarded Owen's discussion of evolution as the most important theoretical issue addressed by the giant reptiles that Buckland had first recognized and that Owen had just named as dinosaurs.

Evolution must be a genuinely awful and absolutely terrible truth if Owen felt compelled to employ the most fearfully great of all fossil creatures in an ultimately vain attempt to refute this central principle of life's history, the source of all organic diversity from
Megalosaurus
to Moses, from
Iguanodon
to the “lowly” infusorians residing inside those zoological oddballs who learn to name dinosaurs and strive to contemplate the great I Am.