Gerry Garbulsky: It is the year 1837, our next speaker is 28 years old.
He is just back from an incredible voyage,
that would later change our conception of life.
Please welcome Charles Darwin himself.
(Applause)
Charles Darwin: Dear colleagues, friends.
I took this invitation to tell you about an idea that little by little
has been developing in my mind.
I consider it a dangerous idea.
Just because I know you are people I can trust,
open minded people that will appreciate how delicate this matter is,
I dare to expose it, yet incomplete.
It’s an idea that concerns me,
and, somehow, it’s turning into a burden too heavy
to be borne alone.
I always considered my academic studies
were nothing but a waste of time.
I really had no idea how my life would turn,
until 6 years ago I got a letter that would change it forever.
My dear friend and mentor Henslow told me that Capitan Fitz-Roy
was about to start an expedition around the world
and was willing to share part of his cabin
with a young naturalist, without salary.
That would be the beginning of an adventure that would fulfill...
Fulfill? It would exceed all my dreams since I was a little boy!
The expedition took longer than expected. It ended up taking five years.
And even so, I couldn’t get used to the boat rocking movement.
But, the natural wonders I saw, what I learned in that trip.
I took notes almost every day,
returned with so many journals I expect to publish as soon as possible.
As a kid I loved nature, loved it, collected minerals, insects.
I remember once, I found a spectacular beetle,
very different from the ones I had.
And I caught it with a hand,
and another one appeared and I caught it with the other hand,
finally a third beetle appeared and I couldn’t think of a better idea
than putting one of them into my mouth in order to free one hand.
At that moment, the beetle spat a horrible liquid,
very acid, I had to spit it out and lost the other beetles.
Imagine what it meant to me, then,
to have access to that place in the boat of Fitz-Roy.
Besides, before we left, professor Henslow
gave me a geology book.
I must admit that, when I was studying in Edinburgh,
geology always seemed boring to me.
I even swore I would never read a book about it again.
But, as it was a gift from him I agreed to take it and read it.
The book is "Principles of Geology" by Charles Lyell.
An author I admired from the first page.
And now I boast about counting him among my closest friends.
Lyell says that when we face any geological formation,
like a canyon or valley,
we shouldn’t explain it through extraordinary causes,
like a singular flood or the caprice of the gods.
No. All the past events, no matter how extraordinary they may seem
should be explained through ordinary causes.
For example, a canyon or a valley, through the action of an ordinary river
that slowly and constantly erodes it for a long time.
The key was time.
Imagine how long it takes for a little riverbed to form a canyon.
The Earth, my friends, is much older than we thought.
Time and raindrops.
Multiplying the drops by thousand downpours,
and multiplying the action of a river by thousand years,
Lyell turns geology into a mature discipline.
He simply teaches us to recognize
and decode in the rocks the message of time.
He teaches us a new perspective to see the geological formations we already knew.
As if they were the wrinkles in the face of an old world.
The impact the book had on me was such
that every time I faced a landscape never seen by Lyell,
I saw it through his eyes.
Although nature wasn’t the same after him,
it would still be the object of my passion.
So, it occurred to me to ask myself if this approach
couldn’t be applied to other fields.
That is, if the repetition of little events
through huge periods, makes them effective.
Maybe, time has created new things in unforeseen spheres.
That is, Lyell explains the origin of a canyon
with processes as simple as erosion.
So, is it possible to explain in a similar way
the mystery of all mysteries?
That is to say, the origin of the species.
But, which are the forms, the forces, that are still working
and have shaped life?
Which is the erosion that has created
the wonderful diversity of species that inhabits our planet?
No doubt, not even one, that the naturalist
who finds which such processes are, will be the Newton of natural history.
But, while I was asking myself these questions during the trip
I started to notice certain signs in nature.
Without being able to understand their meanings and implications.
Like a detective arriving at the crime scene
and doesn't know how it was committed.
I’m talking of the dangerous idea
I’m here to tell you about.
For example, in the Galapagos archipelago
I noticed that in each island different turtles inhabited,
with a different aspect, but above all with a different flavor
More than one proudly recognized the island the dinner came from
with just a bite.
Many believed that it just was a caprice of the creator.
I was concerned about it.
I needed to find another answer.
I had clues for a new idea.
But this idea didn't mature during the trip, but later.
It was by accident.
I sent my complete collection of birds from the trip to an expert ornithologist
to have them catalogued.
In the sample, there were a series of little birds, chaffinches,
I collected in the four islands I visited in Galapagos.
In each island, the chaffinches showed different modifications.
The idea I came up with, the most reasonable one,
was that the birds came from the continent
and have adapted to the different environments
of each island.
We were dogmatically taught that a species can never be transformed into another one.
However, the expert told me that despite their resemblance
they weren’t varieties of the same species
but different species.
The modifications the chaffinches suffered in each island
achieved what we considered impossible;
the species change.
Can the ordinary mechanisms that generate transformations
in each species create different species
if we give them enough time?
I thought how taxonomists group life forms:
varieties into species, species into kinds,
kinds into families.
The “family" idea started to go around in my head.
And if it was just about that?
If the term "relationship" was more than an expression
but a real thing instead?
If the whole life on Earth was part of a big family?
Maybe, the complete biodiversity
is the product of the descendant
of some ancient ancestors.
Perhaps, and this may be a little risky,
there is a single ancestor for all of us.
Imagine. The history of Earth, the history of life on Earth
would be like the history of a tree.
A tree whose branches represent
the varieties of all the families
that inhabited and inhabit our planet.
A family tree that grows imperceptibly day by day.
And this is where the idea becomes even more dangerous.
If we follow the implicit logic of this thought,
we, human beings,
would also be part of this big family,
with moths, orangutans, and Galapagos chaffinches.
We would be a little branch in the leafy tree of life.
We wouldn’t be the result of the direct action of the creator.
We’d no longer be the center of creation,
but just descendants of an animal form already extinct.
But as always, this leads us to new questions.
If we all are part of a big family,
it’s inevitable to want to know how our ancestors were.
Perhaps in the future, we may be lucky and able to find their fossils.
But, how can we know how they moved, what they thought,
laughed, cried, what they dreamed of?
Lyell taught me to read the past in the geological strata.
I wondered in which stratum we naturalists
should read our own past.
We bear the footprints with which, in the future,
we could rescue our ancestors.
The forces we are searching for left a scene full of clues.
And the answer, like the erosion, is in the full eye of everyone.
You just have to be open minded to find it.
Think about it:
If someone meets with me, my brother and my cousin Francis
in a room, they could suspect we are family.
They could even dare say my brother is closer to me than my cousin.
All this, just thanks to
the detailed observation of the physical resemblance.
So, observe the wing of this bat.
It has the same bones, in the same disposition as our hand.
And these similarities can also be found
in the structure of a bird's wing,
or even in an extinct reptile.
From my point of view, these similarities occur
because they are inherited from a common organism:
the organism from which they descend.
And these similarities reflect a genealogical relationship.
Birds, mammals and reptiles are family.
And we can also deduce that bats
are closer to us than reptiles or birds.
Like my brother is closer to me
than my cousin.
And another very important thing:
if someone observes my cousin, my brother and me,
they could imagine, even without meeting him,
characteristics of my grandfather.
By examining these bones,
we can know characteristics of the organism they descend from.
For example, that it had a spine,
that certain bones were connected with other ones, etc.
And, isn’t it possible to apply this method further than to bones?
Don’t the yawns, that many times
our loyal dogs pass on us,
talk of our ancestors?
Isn’t it meaningful
that in our anger gestures we show our teeth?
Like wanting to show the huge canines we no longer have.
Maybe, it’s a gesture dogs and humans inherited from a common ancestor.
And the dogs that keep us company at home,
and we consider members of our family,
who would have thought that they really are our family.
And who would have thought that partridges are too,
in which both human and dogs buried our teeth.
I know I have to find an explanation,
in Lyell’s way,
that tells how they are produced,
these modifications,
These ramifications in the tree of life.
How come my dear chaffinches
got their beaks modified, in each island
to be able to eat the food available there?
What is missing is the natural mechanism
that generates the beautiful adaptations of the organisms
to their environment.
To be honest, I have no idea which this mechanism is.
Anyway, all this radically changes
the way we see ourselves.
That’s why the idea is so dangerous.
It’s against the foundation
of our moral values.
How could I share this idea with people who still think
that we are the center of creation?
How could I share it with an audience
that doesn’t even recognize a common origin for all human beings
and in this way pretends to justify slavery?
How would they take my idea that we have an origin in common with primates?
Beyond the seriousness of this statement
I was comforted that this conception
gives arguments to those of us
who are horrified by slavery.
I remember how terribly upset I was
when I saw the unfair treatment black people received in Brazil,
or the natives in Argentina.
I see from here that some of you look at me flabbergasted,
others even show me their canines.
Another ones, curiously, seem satisfied with the idea.
It’s not necessary to convince me of how hard it is to digest this idea.
It’s like wasting almost all I learned during my studies
and much of what you probably learned.
Well, the confession is made.
And I say confession because having told you my idea,
for my conscience and fears,
is like having confessed a crime.
Thank you.
(Applause)