Daniel Duzdevich gives Darwin's masterpiece a linguistic makeover in Darwin's On the Origin of Species: A Modern Rendition.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being growth with reproduction; inheritance that is almost implied by reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are capable of conceiving—namely, the production of the higher animals—directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
The lecture room is surprisingly crowded. No, for an academic talk on Darwin and modernity, it's packed. The only free seat plants me next to one of my biology professors. Perfect. It's 2009, and I have an idea to tell him. But before I can overcome my studenty awkwardness, our speaker settles the room with a curious assertion: "Darwin is here with us, right now." A bit cryptic, yes, but since then I've learned that Darwin remains, in many places and in many minds, extraordinarily present.
My idea is to translate On the Origin of Species into clear modern English. I tell the professor that I'm frustrated. Darwin's masterwork is the most important book in the history of biology—everyone knows it—and yet few have actually read it. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the outstanding obstacle is Darwin's language. Don't get me wrong, at his best Darwin is poetic, but for some readers the Origin is a trial of clumsy syntax, run-on sentences (sometimes up to a page!), and a Victorian tone that can be decidedly dreary to the modern ear. I'm not the only one to notice this... Darwin found his own style "incredibly bad" while working on the proofs. Unfortunately, a century later, I agree. The professor smiles, encouragingly, and wonders how it’s possible that no one has already done this. (I had too: for months I entertained the frivolous delusional certainty that this obvious thing must be out there, barely worth the Google search that revealed it wasn't!) He suggests I try writing a test chapter first. Of course I won't be "writing” it, though. The writing is Darwin's. We muse that perhaps I should play a translator. I should aim to see into Darwin's language and bring back ours: the language of an informed, curious, and modern audience. It proves a great approach to inhabit the author's ideas rather than merely trudge across his words, though the one always remains a gateway to the other.
It's engaging and enlightening work, but I also know that this act of "translation" could spell trouble. The problem with anything Darwin is Darwin. I mean the name itself, a historical brand of overwhelming status. The Origin is so thoroughly soaked in its creator (or is it the other way around?) that the one cannot be disturbed without perturbing the other. So why do it? Why mess with something so revered? Because when I engage deeply with the text I find that simple changes—a comma here, a phrase there—bubble insights to the surface. Clarity and immediacy lurk just beneath the dense prose. The brand name falls away, and the mind remains. I can't help saying "Look! This makes sense now!"
“Why mess with something so revered? Because when I engage deeply with the text I find that simple changes—a comma here, a phrase there—bubble insights to the surface.”
But I wouldn't say that to anyone studying the Origin strictly as a historical text, or who admires Darwin's writing in it. Consider instead the perspective of someone who perhaps has never even read the Origin. How will this (often misleadingly truncated) excerpt from the original strike her?
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. (Origin, 186-187)
A passage of strong argument, but tricky to follow. I have to read it two or three times just to appreciate the logic. Here's the modern rendition:
To suppose that the eye—with its inimitable contrivances for focusing objects at different distances, admitting different amounts of light, and correcting for spherical and chromatic aberration—could have been formed by natural selection seems absurd. But reason tells me that actually—though it seems so hard to imagine—the difficulty is not real. Natural selection can indeed act as the mechanism for the formation of a perfect and complex eye if the following three conditions are met: (1) if we can show that there are numerous gradations from an imperfect and simple eye to a perfect and complex eye, and that each intermediate form is useful to its possessor; (2) if the eye does vary, even a little, and those variations can be inherited, which is certainly the case; and (3) if any variation or modification in the organ is ever useful to an animal in a changing environment. (Modern Rendition, 115)
This rendition is meant to enable a more fluent reading, while the often intricate connections made by Darwin come into relief. As a second example, this is Darwin’s introduction to Chapter IV:
How will the struggle for existence, discussed too briefly in the last chapter, act in regard to variation? Can the principle of selection, so potent in the hands of man, apply in nature? I think we shall see that it can most effectually. Let it be borne in mind in what endless number of strange peculiarities our domestic productions, and, in a lesser degree, those under nature, vary; and how strong the hereditary tendency is. Under domestication, it may be truly said that the whole organization becomes in some degree plastic. Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. (Origin, 80-81)
The reasoning here is uncomplicated. Darwin is simply reviewing some points to illuminate a concept. But the sentences are a bit wordy, and the phrases a bit awkward. A crispness would better serve a paragraph meant to draw us into a chapter. How does the modern rendition fare?
How does the struggle for existence influence variation? Does selection—so potent in human hands—apply in nature? I think it does, most effectively. Recall the strength of heredity and the endless peculiarities in domesticated organisms, and to a lesser extent wild organisms. (Under domestication the whole organization becomes somewhat plastic.) Also recall the complex and close-fitting relationships of all organisms to one another and to their physical environments. If variations useful to humans have occurred, then surely variations useful to each organism in the great and complex battle of life also sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations. Accepting this and adding that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive, can it be doubted that those with even a slight advantage will have the best chance of surviving and propagating their kind? Moreover, it is certain that even slightly detrimental variations are destroyed. I call this preservation of favorable variations and rejection of detrimental variations “natural selection.” (Modern Rendition, 50)
Again, the Modern Rendition is about readability. This translation does not imply that the language of the original is extraneous—it is a rich historical document—but for those mostly interested in the content of the work, it can prove little more than a hurdle to understanding.
The lecture ends and we find out that Darwin is indeed in the room. We are treated to a first edition of the Origin, brought out from its home at the American Museum of Natural History to bask in the admiration of its timeless public. A rare and ridiculously expensive object. An artifact. A curiosity even. A book that can't be dog-eared and read with pencil in hand, only gingerly touched by gloved hands to keep the acid of skin from damaging the delicate pages. And yet I admire it too because this book, unlike any other, is synonymous with its author. That's why I left the famous final passage, with its imagery of a fertile tangled bank, effectively untouched. That must forever belong to Mr. Darwin.
NOTES
- The lecture, titled “Darwin’s Promise: The Centrality of Modern Biology in Achieving a Sustainable World,” was delivered at Columbia University on February 17th, 2009 by Prof. Joel Cracraft of the American Museum of Natural History. "The professor" was Walter Bock, Ernst Mayr’s first graduate student!
- Charles Darwin discusses his dissatisfaction with his own writing in a letter to his publisher, John Murray, dated June 14th, 1859.
Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 2469, University of Cambridge.
- Excerpts of the original text are from the Harvard facsimile of the Origin.
Darwin, C. 1966. On the Origin of Species. A Facsimile of the First Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- A shortened and simplified version of this post first appeared on the blog of the National Center for Science Education: NCSE blog post
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Duzdevich is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. He is a 2012 recipient of an award from the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans and more recently a Josephine de Kármán Fellowship, both in support of his ongoing research into how cells copy their DNA.
