DARWIN’S ALBATROSS: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, DARWINISM, AND THE ROLE OF HYPOTHESES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY GEOLOGY

While it is used today almost exclusively to refer to Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, the origin of the word Darwinism, actually predates the birth of Charles Darwin by five years. The word was originally coined by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a shorthand criticism of the work of Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin, and while obscure, was used at least occasionally by literary critics. Before Charles Darwin ever boarded the HMS Beagle, his family name had entered the Oxford English Dictionary and was literally synonymous with wild speculation and erroneously imbuing nature with properties that it does not have.

While the scientific standards of early Victorian England eschewed hypotheses in general, textual analyses of geological publications from the 1830s and 1840s demonstrate that Charles Darwin was even less likely than his contemporaries to use language suggesting that he was engaging in speculation or hypothesis. This hesitance on Darwin’s part to engage in the sort of hypothesis-driven science necessary to demonstrate the factuality of evolution, persisted until a definition of the word Scientist was general accepted that included the study of the past. Ironically, this definition of scientist was originally formulated by William Whewell and instigated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.