Evolution

I work near the Natural History Museum. For some reason, I’ve always loved the building. It may be one of my favourite buildings in London. Currently, there are signs all around it advertising the Darwin exhibition, which is taking place to commemorate several anniversaries: 150 years this July since Darwin and Wallace announced the theory of evolution through natural selection, 150 years since the publication of ‘On the Origin of Species’ in November 2009 and Darwin’s birthday bicentenary in February 2009. There is also the impressive new £78-million Darwin Centre, which is the most significant extension to the museum since 1881, opening to the public in September 2009. The architecture of concrete, steel and glass, is in stark contrast to the Romanesque Revival-style of the main building, designed by Alfred Waterhouse.

The juxtaposition of such different architectural styles is interesting to me, because it is also symbolic of another less obvious contrast.

The foundation of the museum’s collection was the donated private collection of Sir Hans Sloane, a wealthy and popular physician to high society and royalty. Sloane had collected an impressive number of objects of natural history, books, artefacts and specimens over his lifetime. Prior to his posthumous donation to the nation in 1753, his collection was stored in his own town house and was visited by important people from across the world. Sloane’s encouragement of such visits to his private museum and eventual donation of it (with the instruction that the government should purchase it for the nation’s benefit) were motivated by his passion for public service and his strong Christian beliefs.

The collection was part of the British Museum for a time. Sir Richard Owen became the museum’s first superintendent of the natural history departments in 1856 and was the driving force behind the campaign for the development of a dedicated museum of natural history. The museum was completed while Owen was still serving in this role and was opened to the public in 1881. His vision to create a public institution which would be a ‘cathedral to nature’ was finally realised. The church-like architecture is certainly a testament to the ‘cathedral’ vision. Owen strongly believed in the Divine origin of man and rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, which led to much ill-feeling between the two of them and intense hatred between Owen and ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, Thomas Henry Huxley.

How interesting then, that 150 years later, this monument to both nature and to Owen himself, is now a monument to the very theory that Owen so strongly opposed. There has been a lot of talk recently about the conflict between creationist ideas and evolutionary theory, and whether there is a place for discussing this conflict in the science classroom. This debate has been provoked by the somewhat misconstrued comments of now-resigned director of education at the Royal Society, Professor Michael Reiss.

I don’t personally believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution. But it’s interesting to see how the ethos of an institution can completely evolve over time.

[Natural History Museum - history and architecture]