LETTER: It is right to celebrate the bicentenary of the man who counts as a nexus in the history of ideas. But there were far more important people in other spheres – Stephenson, Faraday, Perkin.

This hype is really counterproductive to any assessment of Darwin’s actual achievement, and if climate change legislation depends on Darwin, it may only do so if his theory of cumulative gradual change is erroneous. One might say such talk is changing the subject.

The article on Monday by Andy Richardson also states quite falsely that the publication of On the Origin of Species proved the theory of evolution. It made no such claim. 

Moreover there were, and remain, other evolutionary theories. If Darwin is thought of it is really his disciples, Huxley and Spencer, the latter who coined the epithet “survival of the fittest”, who were responsible for its notoriety. The use of the term “extermination” seems more akin to Machiavelli or Spengler than to a proponent of gradual and cumulative change.

The theory was regarded as disproven a century ago, and again, 50 years ago it was not counted as a serious possibility. This is hardly scientific importance. One cannot blame Darwin, or even Marx, for mass murder.

Both were liberals, believers in progress and valued hygiene, sewers and fertilisers more than their own disquisitions.

They have suffered by being appropriated by socio-political parties for ends very far removed from their own spheres of activity and interest. No doubt, as in the case of Einstein, they have come to represent what they themselves rejected.

B V Mather

Shrewsbury