Darwin descendant defends evolution theory
 Randal Keynes, whose great-great-grandfather was Charles Darwin, was photographed this week at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where the Darwin exhibit opens today. (Getty Images) |
NEW YORK -- Randal Keynes, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, finds it hard to believe that so many people still think the world was created solely by a supernatural force when, in his view, science has proved otherwise.
''I am disappointed so many people still feel happy with an explanation of the diversity of natural life purely in terms of creation by a supernatural being," Keynes said in a telephone interview yesterday. ''It doesn't surprise me that people still hold to the idea because it's actually so difficult to understand -- the implications of evolution. I fully accept it as difficult to understand, especially just how close humans are to other animals, but this has been shown to be true so clearly through work with DNA."
Keynes, who lives with his wife and two children in Cambridge, England, is in New York for the launch of a sweeping exhibit on Darwin, which opens today at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Dubbed ''the most in-depth exhibit ever mounted" about the naturalist, the show focuses on Darwin's life and his theory of evolution. The exhibit can be viewed in New York until May 29 before it travels to Boston, Chicago, and Toronto.
The exhibit features manuscripts, an iguana, and two Galapagos tortoises, but the most interesting feature may be Keynes. The British author's voice will be heard at the end of the exhibit, reading from Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species." He will also participate in a lecture today on his great-great-grandfather. A box he discovered, which contained some of Darwin's memos, will also be on display.
Keynes, 57, declined to discuss in any detail the debate going on in the United States between those who believe in the theory of evolution versus those who believe in intelligent design theory. But, he said he learned that he was a descendant of a controversial man in grade school.
''When I was about 6, friends who knew I was the great-great grandson of Darwin would make jokes about me being descended from a monkey. I'd point out they were, too," he said. His paternal grandmother was Darwin's granddaughter. He said he learned about Darwin on trips to her home near London.
''She simply told me how different he was from the very gloomy, severe figure everyone thought he was and how he was a man of great modesty and kindness and he had a very lively sense of humor," he recalled. ''She talked about how almost obsessed he was about his science. His children, my great-grandfather and others and his grandchildren would help him with his science. He would ask them to watch out for things. One thing his children watched out for was how earthworms burrowed in the soil. . . . He was also interested in the expressions we make when we laugh and cry, and he saw they were actually close to the expressions other animals made, including apes. So, he'd ask his children to watch the expressions they made -- whether they furrowed their brows when they cried or became angry."
In the late 1990s, Keynes rummaged through his parents' chest of drawers, which were stuffed with papers and photographs that once belonged to Darwin and were later inherited by his father. That was when Keynes found a box that belonged to Darwin's eldest daughter, Annie, who died when she was 10, presumably of tuberculosis. The box included memos from Darwin about his daughter. In 2002, Keynes wrote ''Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution," which looked at how Annie's death influenced the scientist's thinking. After Annie's death, Darwin no longer believed in a kind creator.
''I found this note written by Darwin about Annie's condition. . . . It was Darwin trying to find out what was wrong with her and hoping he could treat her. But they couldn't find anything that would help," he said. ''What he realized is that he just went on caring for Annie. He just couldn't stop caring for her, even though she was dead and year after year he found he still cared for her as much as he did when she was alive. He realized how fundamentally important the affections are between parent and child and how -- to use a modern phrase -- it must be a kind of hardwired part of our makeup. He went on to develop a view on our moral sense."
