Evolution v. Creation Metaphor Watch: Charles Darwin’s Description of Life as a “Great Tree”
Given that most people do not have advanced degrees in mathematics or the sciences, debates and discussions surrounding evolution and creationism appear in the public square in the form of competing metaphors, similes, and extended analogies.
In other words, we use metaphors, similes, and extended analogies to simplify and grasp issues that might be otherwise inaccessible to us.
Hence we can keep a look-out for the ways in which our use of language, especially metaphorical language, frames and structures discussions of evolution and creationism.
Today’s metaphor comes from the end of chapter 4 of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), and concerns Darwin’s description of life as “a great tree.”
A tree or plant that confers long, or even eternal, life upon those who eat of it has long associations in Western cultural history—going back, in Mesopotamia, to the Epic of Gilgamesh, and in the Levant, to the book of Genesis (2:9).
In the New Testament, the writer of Revelation makes a promise, in the voice of Jesus, to persecuted Christians:
To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. (2:7)
In all cases in ancient Western literature, access to life-giving plants or a “tree of life” is allusive. The tree of life is not something that one is a part of, or embedded in, but something to which one is outside of, and strives toward, in the hope of gaining its fruit.
It is thus ironic that Charles Darwin’s metaphor of life as a “great tree” should be built on death and mass extinction, and implicitly embed humans, whether we like it or not, into one of its branches.
Darwin’s metaphor of life as a “great tree” thus marks a stark break from traditional Western cultural and religious associations of trees with life.
But Darwin’s extended analogy of life on earth with a great tree is extraordinarily beautiful, arguably the most beautiful passage in all of his Origin of Species, and Darwin even suggests that the simile so closely matches the actual reality of things that it should be taken literally; that is, as the substantial truth regarding the way things really are. Here’s Darwin’s passage in full:
The affinities of all beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representative, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down on a tree, and which by some chance has been favored and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Leidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.
The conclusion of this passage is particularly jarring, for Darwin equates the tree’s dropped off branches, overlaid with soil and sinking into the earth, with the fossil record—and calls this process of creation and destruction ”beautiful.”
It is thus difficult not to hear in the conclusion of the passage a sly attempt by Darwin to trigger pleasurable associations of death and eros, as in the frequent Victorian artistic portrayals of the dying away of beautiful maidens, such as Shakespeare’s Ophelia and King Charles’s fourteen year old daughter on the Isle of Wight.
And Darwin’s actual using of the phrase “Tree of Life”—set in capital letters—allowed his analogy to carry with it, at its climax, all the religious and traditional associations—and counter-associations—that one might be tempted to make with it.
This passage thus shows that Darwin was not just a great scientist—he was also a skilled writer who knew how to use language to powerful rhetorical and emotional effect.
In the 21st century, Darwin’s once potentially scandalous analogy has reached the status of cliche—and it is difficult today not to think of life in this manner.
Darwin’s tree simile is part of the basis, not just for evolutionary thinking, but ecological thinking.
And when first pointed out to us, it is hard not to respond with recognition, as if encountering a revelation:
Of course life is interconnected and like a branching tree. How did the world miss this observation for so long?
This is the power of metaphorical language.
Below is the image of a tree in which an artist has carved animals. And below that is a more traditional image of the Tree of Life, from Assyria, early in the first millenium BCE, in which two divine beings guard the Tree of Life:
I know what Darwin meant; but what point are You making?
Rob Willox
August 17, 2008 at 10:33 am
Rob,
That Darwin’s metaphor of the Tree of Life marks a distinct cultural and intellectual break from the Tree of Life as conceived in the Western cultural and religious tradition.
I’m sorry if that was not clear.
–Santi
santitafarella
August 17, 2008 at 10:50 am
I think your point here is powerful. As you have written here, Darwin has changed the metaphor of the tree of life. I had not thought about that before. As I think about it now, I remember Whitman’s poem, This Compost, in which he imagined something similar – life, beautiful life, emerging from the earth which holds within it so much death and decay. I think Whitman’s use of the compost metaphor in that poem connects with the ancient regeneration myths of our culture, with myths in which life is ever renewed in Spring. I have imagined that Darwin’s metaphor was consistent with those myths in which life transcends death. But your observation makes me reconsider that apparent consistency, and makes me think again about Whitman’s expression of terror in his poem.
I guess I have been thinking that in Darwin’s writings, as in modern ecology that is built on his metaphors, that the story is told that life and death are woven together in the cosmos. As Darwin wrote, there is grandeur in the cosmic vision he gave us, and yet, to me, the grandeur is associated with terror. I think your observation here explains why.
The narrative of life that Darwin has given us terrifies me because it says that life, my life and the lives of the people I have loved and who have loved me, is rooted in a history, in a cosmos, that is marked by indifference to life and death, to kindness and cruelty, to joy and suffering, to love and hate. And beyond that it says that my life owes itself to such indifference – I am here because of that indifference. In spite of my gratitude to be alive, Darwin’s narrative fills me with survivor guilt and makes me wish I had never been born.
I am not sure it is fair for me to call this Darwin’s narrative. I think he heard this narrative from others and used it to construct his argument about the origin of species. But he is the great narrator of the story.
Ken
August 17, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Ken,
Survivor’s guilt is an interesting way of thinking about it. How can one be happy knowing that so much wreakage has made your happiness possible? Recalling your theological metaphor from a previous post (about The Origin of Species as a form of theodicy), it seems akin to wondering how a religious fundamentalist might imagine himself or herself happy in heaven—even as billions are suffering in hell.
Santi
santitafarella
August 18, 2008 at 11:36 am
That may be one reason that so few people today believe in hell – we feel guilty.
For centuries, the belief that goodness would be rewarded in heaven and evil punished in hell, if not on earth, sustained our hope that living a moral life was worth it and that the wrongs in this life would be made right in the next. Even Socrates believed that goodness would be rewarded. Plato wrote something in The Republic similar to Paul’s theodicy – that in the end God works all things for good for those who love him.
If what Darwin has written is true, then there is no basis for such hope. If chance and necessity are the authors of life and the cosmos, good and evil do not matter and suffering has no meaning – it just hurts.
Ken
August 18, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Metaphor is certainly a powerful tool and in particular the combination of animal and plant metaphor provides us with a “systems thinking” perspective, in that we can use them to observe relationships as a whole set and not just at the individual behaviours within the environment.
In the book The Organizational Zoo A Survival Guide to Workplace Behavior, Shelley argued with the editor for a long time about the necessity of inclusion of Quercus Robur (the Oak tree) as a metaphor for the inspirations chairperson who brought great value into the organization to contrast the other characters who were all animals and by definition consumers. Fortunately Quercus remained and has been a real feature of dicussions around how to best balance behaviours in the workplace. And so it is with any evolutionary change, the prevailing forces shape who we are and what the next generation behave and how they survive. Darwin himself was reported to say “It is not the strongest species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.
My point? I am reinforcing the original authors point that Darwin, like many writers use metaphor to simplify our understanding. This enables others to enter the discussion and therefore we get greater diversity of dialogue leading to better solutions. The world needs open conversations up if we are to find the best approaches going forward together. We need to listen more and tell less if the human race is to survive on this unique planet.
Arthur Shelley
August 18, 2008 at 4:09 pm