Hey Royal Society: So Where's My Darwin Medal?

The Royal Society is Nought but a Darwin and Wallace Glee Club!

Sir Gavin de Beer (FRS) wrote in the Wilkins Lecture for the Royal Society (de Beer 1962 on page 333):

"...William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew were predecessors who had actually published the principle of natural selection in obscure places where their works remained completely unnoticed until Darwin and Wallace reawakened interest in the subject.'

de Beer just wrote very silly nonsense on the Matthew matter in order to hoodwink his readers. Because Matthew's book did no pass completeltely unnoticed at all.

What the expert Royal Society member Sir Gavin Rylands de Beer, British evolutionary embryologist, Director of the British Museum (Natural History), President of the Linnean Society, and receiver of the Royal Society's Darwin Medal for his studies on evolution

The book that re-wrote the
history of the discovery of
natural selection

never revealed is that Darwin knew the naturalist  John Loudon had reviewed Matthew's book in 1832 and that before 1860 another (a naturalist professor) feared to teach Matthew's heretical idea on evolution.Furthermore,  I have uniquely discovered (see Nullius in Verba)  that  at least 25 people actually cited Matthew's (1831) book before Darwin's and Wallace's papers - which replicated (without citing) Matthew's original ideas and explanatory examples - were read before the Linnean Society in 1858, seven of them were naturalists, four known to Darwin and two to Wallace.

So where's my Darwin Medal for being proven a better scholar than de Beer on his own subject?

Royal Society Darwin Medal

Perhaps the Royal Society needs to improve the quality of its membership and medal winners? Linnean society too. The pseudo-scholarly Darwin glee-club shame of it! 

Visit PatrickMatthew.com to learn the truth about the discovery of natural selection.

Open letter to the Royal Society. 20.01.2015

Date: 20.01.2015

Dear Royal Society

Charles Darwin (FRS), Alfred Russel Wallace, and Richard Dawkins (FRS) and others, among whom I include myself, acknowledge that Patrick Matthew (1831) - in his book On Naval Timber and Arboriculture - published the full theory of natural slection many years before Darwin and Wallace put pen to private notepaper on the topic and 28 years before Darwin and Wallace (1858) had their papers read before the Linnean Society.

Matthew uniquely coined his discovery the 'natural process of selection' and 29 years later Darwin uniquely shuffled Matthew's term into his own unique re-coinage the 'process of natural selection'. Darwin and Wallace each claimed to have arrived at exactly the same theory, used the same terminology and the same unique explanatory examples, independently of Matthew and independently of one another.

The purpose of my open letter, therefore, is to request of the Royal Society an official statement to explain whether the Royal Society will affirm that Patrick Matthew, by dint of his achievement at publishing first one of the greatest discoveries in science, should be officially awarded full priority over both Darwin and Wallace for his great unique breakthrough?

I presume the Royal Society has not unofficially changed its views on the rules of priority? In this regard I wish to remind the Royal Society of the Arago Effect to which it has adhered in all other disputes over priority for discovery in science - which is that being first is everything.

Ignoring the convention of priority, and specifically ignoring the Arago Effect, Richard Dawkins (2010)    and others have created a new, unique in the history of scientific discovery, "Dawkins' Demand Rule" , which is that Dawkins demands that Matthew should not have priority over Darwin and Wallace because it was previously their mere un-evidenced 'knowledge belief' that Matthew's unique views went unnoticed. And because Dawkins demands that Matthew should have "trumpeted his discovery from the rooftops" at a time of great social unrest and tension when his political ideas, linked to and including his natural selection discovery, were criminally seditious and heretical. However, newly available Big Data research techniques reveal solid evidence, from the independently verifiable published literature, that Matthew's (1831) book was, in fact, (all pre 1858) cited by other naturalists known to Darwin/Wallace - including Loudon (who edited and published two of Blyth's influential papers), Robert Chambers (who wrote the highly influential book on evolution - the Vestiges of Creation) and Prideaux John Selby (who edited and published Wallace's Sarawak paper). (see: my peer reviewed paper for this new evidence http://britsoccrim.org/new/volume14/pbcc_2014_sutton.pdf    ).

In sum, would the Royal Society please make an official statement regarding whether or not it has abandoned its former acceptance of the Arago Effect? (see for references to papers on it: http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/m... )

If the Royal Society is quietly in approval of an unannounced exception to the rule of priority in the case of Patrick Matthew would it be so good as to explain why? And if so, could the Royal Society please go further than remaining publicly silent on this important issue of contested priority by making an official statement regarding whether or not they have adopted a unique and biased Darwinist 'made for Matthew' rule?

Yours sincerely

Dr Mike Sutton (Reader in Criminology and Sociology)
School of Social Sciences
Nottingham Trent University