The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

“The Origin of Species says very little about the origin of species.  [...] Darwin talks about the breeding of pigeons. He talks about Malthus, fossils, patterns in the geographic distribution of flora and fauna. He marshals an enormous mass of evidence that evolution has happened. Yet Darwin never saw it happen, either in the Galápagos (where he spent only five weeks) or anywhere else.”

The origin of species (or the cause(s) of speciation) becomes a driving question in The Beak of the Finch. Weiner introduces the question casually, by way of an ironic observation that the title of Darwin’s book on evolution did not quite capture its content. This short passage is the first of many to highlight the difficulty of studying evolution, considering that even the theory’s founder did not witness it in action. It adds another level of meaning to the Grants’ study, casting the Grants as Darwin’s intellectual heirs who come closer to witnessing the process than he ever could.

“After dark, they can sit on thrones made of relics of several shipwrecks apiece and lashed together with bits of string and read the Origin by candlelight. And a single black male finch sits at the top of a cactus tree giving out long, repeated whistles, very lonely and melancholy. Before going to bed they sometimes look up and see great frigatebirds like black angels silhouetted against the moon.”

Weiner’s vivid visual description compellingly dramatizes this story of a scientific research study. The evocative prose in this quotation depicts the romantic and bleak landscape on Daphne Major. It emphasizes the isolation of Daphne, suggesting an almost supernatural displacement from the concerns of modern life. Through Weiner’s scenic writing, metaphors, and poetic turns of phrase, the island and its avian occupants accumulate symbolic meanings over the course of the book.

“In Linnaeus’s vast botanical collections, he did notice many examples of local plant varieties, variations on a theme. But in his system these varieties were not half as significant as true species. Local varieties were merely instances in which one of the Lord’s created species had come to be adapted to its particular neighborhood. By definition, this divergence from the original type had occurred since the moment of Creation. Thus, varieties belonged to time and to our mortal earth, whereas species were incarnations of the holy thoughts in the mind of God during the act of creation.”

This passage illustrates the theological tradition that influenced Darwin’s young life. Weiner explains the incompatibility of Karl Linnaeus’s taxonomic system and evolution, as the taxonomy was grounded in devotion to God’s will.