Voyaging with Darwin: How Much Does Wandering Inspire Our Big Ideas?
Charles Darwin’s five-year voyage around the world reveals the creative force behind wandering.
“Delight itself…is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who, for the first time, has been wandering by himself in a Brazilian forest…To a person fond of natural history, such a day as this, brings with it a deeper pleasure than he ever can hope again to experience.”
-Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
Nearly thirty years before Charles Darwin published the magnum opus of the 19th century, On the Origin of Species in 1859, he set off on a voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle. From 1831 to 1836, Darwin was granted a remarkable opportunity to wander and explore much of the interior, coasts, and islands of South America as well as more limited excursions to parts of Africa, Australia, and other parts of Oceania. These experiences and the many fossils, flora, and fauna of these regions that he collected and sent back to England later enabled him to devise novel insights that would later contribute to the theory of evolution he put forth in On the Origin of Species.
Five years of wandering in the world appears to have played a major role in bolstering the empirical evidence and arguments for the theory of evolution. How might history have played out had Darwin not taken this opportunity to voyage? In an alternative universe, would his academic rival Alfred Russell Wallace have become the sole 19th-century figurehead of evolution by means of natural selection?
Darwin’s wanderings in South America—what he referred to as the “great workshop of nature”—served as an empirical training ground for the budding naturalist. His time spent exploring the incredible array of landscapes on the continent enabled him to piece together many profound ideas that were circulating at the time about the age of the earth and how species changed from such esteemed figures as French zoologist Georges Cuvier, French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck, the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, English anatomist Richard Owen, English economist Thomas Malthus and his notable grandfather, English physician Erasmus Darwin.
What does wandering accomplish for us and how does it impact the creative force behind the world’s grandest ideas? Some of the greatest innovators of our time endorse wandering. In an insightful discussion on the thinking process and development of ideas, business magnate Jeff Bezos recently responded to the question of how he thinks by describing the appeal and utility of wandering for generating new and creative ideas in an interview with Lex Fridman,
“I know it involves lots of wandering. When I sit down to work on a problem, I don’t know where I’m going. Real invention, real lateral thinking requires wandering. And you have to give yourself permission to wander.”
It doesn’t appear that Mr. Bezos is necessarily wandering in the depths of the actual Amazon to get his bold ideas, but he is on to something. Anyone who has spent long periods on adventures and traveling knows this. In a previous post on the benefits of wandering in the modern world, I remarked on the innate capacity humans have for innovation and self-reliance,
When we come to experience life on a long-distance trail or abroad immersed in a foreign culture where our accessibility to familiar technology and things we previously depended on are limited or nowhere to be found, we can become quickly unsettled. We’re forced to confront our ignorance and inadequacies. But in striving to overcome such obstacles we meet the creative side of ourselves that once lay dormant within us and we gradually come to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. As we persevere we come to find a renewed appreciation and confidence in our adaptability. We often “wow” ourselves with our brilliance for improvisation and those epiphanies can inspire us to take further steps toward adventures that give us similar experiences.
However, it is still a mystery how our ideas come to us. Great ideas seem to percolate into our heads seemingly out of nowhere without rhyme or reason. So just how much does the context or environment matter to our creativity? In one of my favorite movies, Back to the Future¸ the eccentric scientist Doc Brown comes up with the idea of the “flux capacitor” which “makes time travel possible” after falling off the toilet and hitting his head. Despite being a dramatic movie, the point illustrates the absurd way in which ideas just seem to appear in our brains. “Where do our ideas come from?” may be one of the most profound scientific mysteries remaining. Nevertheless, it also seems likely that taking time to wander and see the world from many vantage points assuredly has a profound impact on our creative capacities.
Charles Darwin’s account of his voyage on the HMS Beagle was published soon after his return in what is today titled Voyage of the Beagle and is, to my mind, best described as a naturalist’s travelogue. Few modern readers might find these 19th-century descriptions of mollusks, kelp, birds, reptiles, insects, coral reefs, fossils, and geological strata to be a riveting page-turner but you might be surprised by how vivid and enriching Darwin’s prose is, and some of the events he witnesses are quite extraordinary and gripping. Okay maybe not the part about the kelp which he manages to ramble on about for two and a half pages, but generally speaking what initially stands out the most is how exquisite his talents of description of the natural world were at such a young age. Here is Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, musing solemnly about the mountains and glaciers,
“The dark ragged clouds were rapidly driven over the mountains, from their summits nearly to their bases. The glimpses which we caught through the dusky mass were highly interesting: jagged points, cones of snow, blue glaciers, strong outlines marked on a lurid sky, were seen at different distances and heights…The inanimate works of nature—rock, ice, snow, wind, and water—all warring with each other, yet combined against man—here reigned in absolute sovereignty…These vast patches of snow, which never melt, and seem destined to last as long as the world holds together, present a noble and even sublime spectacle…Several glaciers descended in a winding course, frozen Niagaras; and perhaps these cataracts of blue ice are to the full as beautiful as the moving ones of water.”
Incredibly, Darwin was in his early twenties when he voyaged. He compiled his meticulous notes into Voyage of the Beagle in his mid-20s. Few twenty-year-olds, at any point in history, have possessed the aptitude for skillful writing and the art of observation that Darwin did, much less the staggering amount of encyclopedic knowledge he had.
Another highlight of this work is that it paints a very different picture of Darwin that most representations have failed to capture. If you’ve read biographies or watched documentaries about Darwin’s life, he’s often portrayed as an old posh and reclusive Victorian spending his quiet hours in contemplation at his estate, Down House, or patiently pondering evolution as he strolls through the English countryside or garden with his white beard and pipe.
In the Voyage of the Beagle, we encounter a young vivacious Darwin traveling by horseback and mule with gauchos in Patagonia, smoking cigarillos, drinking maté, sleeping in the dirt (bivouacking), or dwelling in rustic remote cottages, battling seasickness and other ailments (Darwin was afflicted with health issues for much of his life), and eating a range of local cuisines that would make Anthony Bourdain envious. We see him riding giant tortoises in the Galapagos, then subsequently sautéing and eating them over an open fire for dinner.
Darwin evades dangerous conflicts ensuing at the time between what he occasionally comments on as the warfare and violence between Europeans and the indigenous populations of Patagonia. In one instance, Darwin is momentarily caught in the middle of one of Argentina’s violent revolts—known as the Desert Campaign—occurring in Buenos Aires in October of 1833. Darwin happens to be an interesting and surprising source of anthropological insight and global politics at this time. He observes and interacts with varying indigenous groups throughout his travels from Brazil and Patagonia to Tahiti, Australia, and New Zealand. He even records the herculean feats and sorrowful conditions Chilean miners endured seeking gold, copper, and iron ore in the Andes mountains.
When you remember that this was a time before photography and easy access to information, you realize how extraordinary his naturalist knowledge was and how well-read he was for his age to be able to evoke such colorful and accurate imagery of the landscape, flora, and fauna. And he is humble about it. He is always prefacing his thoughts that he is “not botanist enough” to fully comment on some new plant species or defers to other learned scientists of the time that they probably know more than him on a given subject. Despite the modesty, he is remarkably familiar with the many plants and animals of other continents such as Africa, North America, and Australia, and compares them with accuracy to what he is observing in South America.
Darwin is also very learned in multiple subjects, such as geology, geography, paleontology, osteology, zoology, botany, taxonomy, mineralogy, and ecology. All of these fields were subsumed into the single domain of being a naturalist in his day and although Darwin had access to the elite circles of the English intelligentsia of the time, his encyclopedic knowledge of all these subjects is nonetheless admirable. He even comments on the disruptive impacts domesticated plants and animals were having on the natural ecology of the places he was tramping through, thus anticipating modern ecological concerns about invasive species and the notable impacts domesticated species were having on the environment.
We see the young Darwin already drawn to three of the primary sources that would later come to serve his thesis on evolution by natural selection:
1) the stratigraphic geological layers across the landscape, many containing marine shells found fossilized on mountain outcrops such as he found 14,000 feet up on his ascents of the Andes;
2) numerous species of extinct megafauna, such as the fossilized remnants of mastodons, giant armadillos, sloths, and horses of the Pleistocene epoch found ubiquitously in the deposits of river valleys. Indeed, he devotes several pages to contemplating the mysterious extinction of many species from the Ice Age and ponders why it appeared to be a global extinction event from South America to North America and Europe to Siberia where several well-preserved specimens were already being retrieved from the Arctic tundra; and
3) the similar but slightly diverged species found across the landscape especially the tortoises and mockingbirds he observes in the Galapagos Islands.
The experiences Darwin gathered must have been of equal weight to the physical collections he assembled to influence his later ideas about the change of species and the natural processes affecting them. While in Valdivia, Chile—a region plagued by devastating earthquakes—Darwin is stirred awake by an immense earthquake lasting for two minutes,
“The rocking of the ground was most sensible…the motion made me almost giddy. It was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body.”
In the following days, Darwin would travel to the nearby town of Concepción to find that the earthquake and subsequent tsunami of 1835 had destroyed some seventy villages throughout the area and wreaked much havoc on the local population, killing around 50 people out of an estimated population of 40,000. What Darwin records is truly apocalyptic. He reports firsthand accounts of peoples’ experiences—losing loved ones in the rubble, explosions, livestock being cast into the sea from steep cliffs lodged loose by the vibrations, and the water in the bay boiling and emitting black sulfurous smoke. As the earth cracked, massive tidal waves surged, and fires broke out from kilns burning in homes; virtually everyone’s possessions seemed to have been obliterated by some horrific combination of earth, wind, fire, and water. As he recorded in his journal,
“Both towns [Talcuhano and Concepción] presented the most awful yet interesting spectacle I ever beheld. To a person who had formerly known the the places, it possibly might have been still more impressive; for the ruins were so mingled together, and the whole scene possessed so little the air of a habitable place, that is was scarcely possible to imagine its former appearance or condition.”
Despite this remarkable desolation, Darwin also remained true to his scientific enterprise and was enamored by the geological processes he was witnessing. He coupled much of his commentary and observations with theorizing on the long-term implications of all of these active forces on living systems. If you’ve ever read a geological textbook, chances are you didn’t get far past the first chapter on the difference between igneous, metaphoric, and sedimentary rocks, because most of us find learning the subject this way incredibly dull. Rightly so! The only “dip-slip fault” we learn with any experience is when we fall asleep in class with our arm perching up our head and then find ourselves frightened awake as our head suddenly dips and slips onto the table.
Thus, being out in the world and experiencing things like the feeling of earthquakes scaring the hell out of us or climbing mountains to witness firsthand the varying strata of rocks and embedded shells strikes a much more adventurous chord in us and churns the mind with wonder in a way that books and classroom lectures cannot deliver. As Darwin himself was aware and reflected on the psychological impact of firsthand experience,
“The traveller [sic] who is an eyewitness of some great and overwhelming earthquake…perhaps [will] be more deeply impressed with the never-ceasing mutability of the crust of this our World.”
Darwin concludes his account of his five-year voyage by contemplating a central lesson of wandering and what many other travelers have agreed on across the centuries about the enduring spirit of humanity,
“Travelling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly goodnatured [sic] people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance.”
Darwin embodied the ideal scientist—one who daringly ventures out to visit the world with all senses present and rigorously studies the theory behind scientific phenomena. It’s difficult to imagine how Darwin’s life trajectory would have played out had he not taken this opportunity of a lifetime. Indeed, that is what almost happened. His father Robert Darwin was not initially thrilled about his young son “wasting time” on such a dangerous excursion and preferred the young Darwin continue to pursue his theological and medical studies and become a parson or religious leader in the Anglican Church. It was only with the wise intervention of his uncle Josiah Wedgewood II that Darwin’s father came around to fully support his son’s voyage. It is rather extraordinary how the direction of history seems to hinge on minuscule yet deeply consequential instances such as this.
It is hard to fathom how the history of ideas regarding the theory of evolution would have unfolded without this five-year sojourn. One can’t help but wonder how much of a role these years spent wandering the planet contributed to Darwin’s synthesis. Would Darwin have been able to piece the theory of natural selection together all from his armchair at Down House without these ventures?
What might come of our individual lives if each of us had five years to wander and explore this world? If we were given the chance to wander for five years, would we take it?
Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.
Cheers!
-JSB
The accounts of the earthquake are gripping. Thanks for including that at the expense of details about kelp. Good post.