Claim CA002.2:
Marx sent a personally inscribed copy of the second edition of Das
Kapital
to Darwin and wanted to dedicate it to him, but Darwin wrote a letter
politely declining.
Source:
Response:
- Darwin wrote a letter declining the dedication of an unnamed book on
atheism, but he wrote it to Edward Aveling. Aveling's common-law wife
was Elanor Marx, Karl's daughter, and she inherited his papers. They
got mixed up with Karl Marx's papers, and the letter was assumed to
have been to Marx. This view found ideological favor in Russia, so it
was widely repeated. Later, a letter from Aveling, requesting
permission to dedicate his book The Student's Darwin to Darwin, was
found among Darwin's papers.
Darwin declined permission and argued that science should not address
religious matters directly (Colp 1982; Carter 2000).
- Darwin did have a copy of Das Kapital, but its pages were unseparated
when he died, so he never read it.
- None of this matters to the science of evolution.
References:
Further Reading:
Colp, Ralph Jr. 1982. The myth of the Darwin-Marx letter.
History of Political Economy 14(4): 461-482.
Dawkins, Richard. 2000. There's more to books than titles.
http://archive.workersliberty.org/wlmags/wl61/dawkins.htm
created 2001-2-17, modified 2004-6-28
