And embraced, and turned into a cult. He wrote that around 1910.
In “How Was Darwin’s Theory Accepted? The Curious History of a Secular Creation Myth, or, Darwin’s Cultural Armor, pt. 2”, science historian Michael Flannery explains, (Evolution News & Views July 27, 2011):
As I suggested in my earlier post, the enduring power of Darwinism rests not primarily in its purported science but in its cultural aspect. Here ETA is in strong evidence as Darwinism was embraced by Darwin’s affinity group, the relatively small but influential Victorian elites who served as rapid conduits for unprecedented idea transmission. The English jurist, politician, and historian James Bryce best characterized the Darwin phenomenon reminiscing 50 years after the publication of Origin of Species:
No book dealing with a scientific subject had ever, I suppose, been so largely read by people who were not scientific. I was an undergraduate at Oxford at the time, and I recollect very well that many of my fellow undergraduates who never opened–I will not say a scientific, but hardly even a serious book before–procured the treatise and read it with avidity. We all talked about it. We discussed it with the greatest ardor, indeed, with a positiveness which was in inverse ratio to our knowledge; and it was the same all over England. The Origin was not only the subject of constant comment in magazines and newspapers as well as at meetings of scientific societies, but it furnished a theme for constant jests in the comic papers, and it was an unfailing topic for conversation in all cultivated private houses. (Glick, p. 38)
So much for claims about Darwin scandalizing society!
And what about the suggestion that the Church of England apologize for not understanding Darwin?
Part I is here.
File under: Real history, not the cult’s version, taught in school