The Humpty Dumpty Colchester Cannon Myth is Bust

One particularly entertaining example, but nevertheless an important one because it superbly demonstrates the power and multidisciplinary application of the method to solve long-standing historical problems, is what the IDD Big Data research method (Sutton 2014) revealed about the etymological origin of the naming of the nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty. This was a great etymological mystery dating back to the 19th century.

The online Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (2012) notes an alcoholic beverage named ‘Humtie Dumtie’ is noted in published print dated 1698. However,unevidenced claims abound to explain the alleged literary influence for the original 18th century nursery rhyme character that came to be represented 74 years later in Lewis Carroll’s (1871) Alice Through the Looking Glass. Dutra, (2005. P. 165) and Foster (2008) for example, claim on the basis of no independently verifiable evidence whatsoever, that the name for and natural wall-sitting habitats of this character originate from ‘Humpty Dumpty’ being a Royalist forces cannon that fell off a wall in the English Civil War.

At the time of writing, the OED’s earliest recorded example of the name being applied to a character is 1785. Surpassing that, in November 2013 (see Sutton 2014a) IDD revealed that a classical stage character named Punchanello (AKA Punchinello), is currently the earliest independently verifiable cultural influence for an egg-shaped character being called Humpty Dumpty:

“Beau Humpty-dumpty next appears,
A merry Lump well grown in Years,
With Back and Breast like Punchanello."
                                                       (Anonymous 1701, p. 28)

IDD revealed also the observation by Pepys (1665) of a Parliamentary forces cannon named Punchinello. That finding triangulates the significance of the Punchanello-Humpty-Dumpty discovery by neatly debunking the un-evidenced Royalist cannon myth and providing a most compelling clue to explain its obscure origins (see Sutton 2014a). This discovery shows that the IDD method, even in the hands of the amateur, is a myth-busting research tool, which on occasion performs better than etymology and cultural history experts informing the OED and other renowned sources. Simply having the power to date and Boolean search in one go within tens of millions of documents enables sociological, historical and etymological myths to be bust and entrenched problems solved.

References

Anonymous (1701) A rod for Tunbridge beaus, bundl'd up at the request of the Tunbridge Ladies. To Jerk Fools into more Wit and Clowns onto more Manners. A Burlesque Poem. London.

Carroll, L. (1871) Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Macmillan.

Dutra, S. (2005) Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics: The Strange Theory of Light in a Box. New Jersey. John Wiley.

Foster, S. (2008) Hey Diddle-Diddle: Our Best-Loved Nursery Rhymes and What They Really Mean. Chichester. Summerdale Publishers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online (2012). http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/89440

Pepys, S. (1665) The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Volume 2. Random House. New York.

Sutton, M. (2014) Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s greatest secret. Cary. USA Thinker Media. Thinker Books.

Darwinist Spuriofacts are Destroyed by Hard Evidence

The 10 Fact Groups that Prove Darwinities Undone

Introduction

The paradigm of Darwin's and Wallace's (1858) and Darwin's (1842, 1844 and 1859) independent conceptions of Patrick Matthew's (1831) prior published conception of the full and complex hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection is based on the premise (e.g de Beer 1962 and Mayr 1982 ) that no one known to Darwin or Wallace, indeed no naturalists at all, read Matthew's (1831) original conception before they replicated it. That Darwinite paradigm is based on a punctured myth. Because it is newly discovered  by me (Sutton 2014) that other naturalists, indeed naturalists well known to Darwin and Wallace, their influencers, and their influencer's influencers in fact did read, and then actually cite in the pre-1858 literature, Matthew's (1831) book before either Darwin or Wallace so much as put pen to private notebook on the topic.

Those seeking to maintain the paradigm of Darwin's and Wallace's independent conceptions of Matthew's prior-published conception of evolution by natural selection are undone by the following ten groups of facts.

Veracity: the 10 groups of facts

FACTS 1. Only Matthew (1831) in his book On Naval Timber wrote about Natural Selection as an explanation for organic macro evolution before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated his original ideas. This is established by many biologists including, for example, Dawkins (2010) in Bryson's edited collection, By Weale (2014) and by Royal Society Darwin Medal winner Ernst Mayr who wrote: 'The person who has the soundest claim for priority in establishing a theory or evolution by natural selection is Patrick Matthew.'

FACTS 2. Matthew wrote about natural selection throughout his book and not just in its appendix. Darwin wrote a deliberate lie when he claimed Matthew limited his orignal ideas on the topic to his book's appendix and he wrote to Joseph Hooker admitting as much (see Sutton 2014). The Matthew Appendix Myth is, therefore, bust by the facts. Furthermore, contrary to claims made by RichardDawkins (2010) and others Matthew's (1831) book was far from obscure. As the citations in Nulliusprove, it was heavily advertised in the first half of the 19th century, reviewed, frequently and cited (many times by Loudon in several books and many times by Selby in his 1842 book on trees. Significantly, it was very prominently advertised on more than half a page in the hugely popular Encyclopedia Britannica in 1842 and cited in the Encyclopedia Britannica again in 1842 in an article (citations to facts here) Moreover, pre -1858, Darwin's private notebook of books to read and books read lists five publications that are now known to cite or advertise Matthew's 1831 book.

FACTS 3. Contrary to claims in many academic textbooks and in social media, Darwin did not coin the term natural selection, nor its scientific meaning. Moreover, he did not coin the term artificial selection (see Sutton 2014).  Matthew used the term the "natural process of selection" in his 1831 book. And Big Data analysis of over 30 million publications reveals he apparently coined that term. Robert Chambers (anonymous author of the "Vestiges of Creation"), who cited Matthew's (1831) book On Naval Timber in 1832, and then in 1840, cited his second (1839) book "Emigration Fields", which took Matthew's (1831) orignal ideas forward with regard to dealing with the social problem of overpopulation in Britain, was apparently 'first to be second' in writing Matthew's apparently orignal term in his review of  Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species. Darwin four-word-shuffled Matthew's term to 'process of natural selection' and in doing so, Big Data analysis reveals he apparently coined that term. See Sutton 2014 for  further details and fully cited facts. Furthermore, Matthew (1831) was first to use the Natural versus Artificial Selection Analogy of Differences as an explanatory analogy for macro evolution by natural selection. As the historian Loren Eiseley discovered, Darwin replicated this original idea in his 1844 private essay with regard to Matthew's highly idiosyncratic wild forest versus nursery grown trees example. And I discovered that Wallace (1858) did so more generally in hisTernate paper. When the arch Darwinite Stephen J. Gould (1983 and 2002) set out to rubbish Eiseley's findings he got his own facts wrong and conveniently cherry-stepped away from mentioning this, Eisley's most compelling evidence of Matthew's influence on Darwin (see Sutton 2015 for the facts). What Gould did is the same grossly misleading biased "cherry stepping" and "cherry picking" misrepresenting de facto fact denial ploy tried by Grzegorz Malec in his so called "review" of my book. It is a shame Eiseley, having died in 1977, could not take Gould to task for his dysology, Malec does not escape. You can read my published right of reply: Here. Matthew's original general explanatory analogy of differences between artificial and natural selection is so important that Darwin used it to open the very first Chapter of the Origin of Species. An electronic plagiarism check reveals many examples of great similarity between the prose and ideas of both Wallace and Darwin compared to Matthew's. For example, Darwin replicated Matthew's unique creative process by replicating his examples of how the natural process of selection works. By way of just two examples, in addition to the example of plants grown in nurseries that Eiseley discovered, Darwin also replicated Matthew's examples of what happens when many seedlings spring up together in a forest. Moreover, he replicated what Matthew cited from Steuart (1828) about cattle eating young trees.    . Only where Matthew cited his source about the cattle example, Darwin audaciously pretended it was his own observation in nature. My book, Nullius   , has an entire chapter dedicated to many other uniquely discovered examples of Darwin's and Wallace's obvious plagiarism of Matthew's book. 

As I reveal (see Sutton 2014 for the full citations) Matthew’s original explanatory analogy was, apparently, replicated first by Mudie (1832), then Low (1844), Darwin (1844), Wallace (in Darwin and Wallace 1858)  and by Darwin again (1859; 1868). Most tellingly, the same Big Data analysis of over 30 million publications in the publication record reveals that Mudie was apparently the “first to be second” in print with the original “Matthewism” “rectangular branching”. 

Most significantly, Mudie was both an associate and two times co-author with Darwin’s most prolific informant Edward Blyth. Blyth’s own work was edited by Loudon, who cited Matthew’s book in 1832.  David Low’s replication of Matthew’s artificial analogy of differences is, arguably, unlikely to be purely coincidental. They were schoolmates at Perth Academy!

 Nullius reveals that Low was apparently twice “first to be second” with the Matthewisms: “long continued selection” and “overpowering the less”. He used each in different publications. Moreover, Low, just four years older than Matthew, was a highly esteemed Professor of Agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. He might, therefore, be the unnamed naturalist professor of a “celebrated university” who Matthew (1860) claimed, in his second open letter to Darwin in the Gardener's Chronicle, was afraid to teach his heretical and original ideas, for fear of pillory punishment, long before 1859. Most importantly, Low was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as was Darwin’s great friend and mentor Charles Lyell. Laird Lyell’s manor house was just 20 miles from laird Matthew’s country seat. It seems improbable Lyell did not know of him and the scandal of heretical ideas in his book (more on Lyell and his connections here). Low's work was very carefully read by Darwin, according to Darwin's own notes, and then recommended by him to the Royal Society for the author's useful work on using artificial selection to explain natural selection.

A new fallacy has sprung up on social media that I am the only person to believe that Matthew influenced Darwin and Wallace through knowledge contamination of their influencers and their influencers's influencers or that Darwin more likely than not plagiarised Matthew. In reality, Samuel Butler (1887, p, 100) believed Darwin copied Matthew but then forgot he had done so. This same cryptomnesia explanation was proposed by Darwin's biographer Clarke (1984). Furthermore, Loren Eiseley (1981) was convinced that Darwin deliberately plagiarised Matthew, as is Milton Wainwright (2008) and (2011).

FACTS 4. Under the Royal Society imposed conventions for priority, as decided by the Arago Rule (Strivens 2003), in cases of non-plagiarised claimed dual or multiple independent conceptions, it is only those who are first to actually publish their original discoveries /original conceptions who have scientific priority for them.

FACTS 5. There is no independently verifiable evidence, other than that which Darwin (a proven serial liar) wrote on his private notebooks and essays in his private study, that Darwin wrote a single word on natural selection anywhere until 1857.  The earliest solid dated, independently verifiable, evidence we have that Darwin actually had definitely written any kind of note or essay on the topic pre-1858 is that he sent a mere abstract a private essay to Gray in 1857. See Sutton 2016 for the peer reviewed facts of the matter. Moreover, Matthew's (1831) book was published six years before Darwin is claimed to have written a single word on the topic in his private Zoonomia notebook of 1837-38, which opens on the subject of Matthew's area of professional expertise. Namely fruit trees. And contains many other examples (here). And Matthew's (1831) book was cited by Darwin's associate and correspondent Robert Chambers in 1832, by Loudon in 1832 (who edited two of Blyth's 1835, 1836 highly influential papers on evolution. Blyth being Darwin's prolific informant and correspondent on the topic) and by Selby in 1842 - the year Darwin is claimed to have penned his first private essay on the topic. Most significantly, Selby went on to be editor of Wallace's Sarawak paper on evolution. Loudon was well known to William Hooker, the father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker, who knew Loudon's work well and praised it to the skies in a book review (see Sutton 2016).

Loudon was also friends and co-author with John Lindley, who deceived the public pre-1858 in order to convince them that he and Lobb were first to propage and import the much loved and famous gaint redwood trees in Britain. All the while he possessed a letter proving that Matthew and his son were first to do so (get the facts here). Lindley's glory stealing fraud helped facilitate Darwin's later claim that Matthew was an obscure writer on forest trees.

FACTS 6.  It is propagandising pseudo-scholarly fact denial behaviour to claim  nonsense of the kind Richard Dawkins has written on this topic. Namely, that Matthew should have "trumpeted his discovery from the rooftops" to prove he understood what he had conceived at a time when it would have been criminally heretical to do so. Dawkins cherry-steps away from the fact that Matthew (1860) - using real examples - very forcefully informed Darwin of this fact in his second letter to the Gardener's Chronicle, where he told Darwin of an (unnamed) naturalist from a prestigious university who could not to teach his orignal work for fear of pillory punishment - and that his book had been banned by Perth public library in Scotland (he called it by its nickname the Fair City) for the same reason.  For the very same reason, Robert Chambers (who is newly discovered to have cited Matthew in 1832) published his heretical Vestiges of Creation - the book that put evolution in the air in the mid 19th century - anonymously until the day he died. See Sutton 2014 for citations to the facts.

FACTS 7. The rationale (premise) for believing Darwin's and Wallace's claims to have each independently conceived Matthew's prior published origination is built entirely on total belief in Darwin's tale that no naturalist (as told in Darwin's 1860 letter of reply to Matthew in the Gardener's Chronicle)  or no one at all (as told by Darwin from the 1861 third edition onwards in every edition of his Origin of Species) is now a punctured myth because it is newly proven that naturalists well known to Darwin and Wallace, and to their influences and their influencer's influencers, in fact did read and then they cited Matthew's (1831) book in the literature years before 1858 (see Sutton 2014). Moreover, Darwin lied - and so committed glory thieving science fraud - when he claimed from 1860 onwards that no naturalist / no one at all had read Matthew's prior published conception - because Matthew had very plainly and forcefully informed Darwin, by way of his two letters published in the Gardener's Chronicle (1860), that the very opposite was true.

FACTS 8. We now newly have 100 per cent proven evidence that routes for knowledge contamination from Matthew's (1831) book to the minds of Darwin and Wallace did exist pre-1858. (See Sutton 2016). This is better than mere smoking gun evidence.

FACTS 9.  It is a fallacy that no one who read Matthew's ideas understood them before Darwin and Wallace replicated them and Matthew brought them to Darwin's public attention in 1860. In reality, in the first half of the 19th century, people would have avoided the taboo of writing about them, because they heretically trespassed on the realm of  natural divinity regarding the topic of the origin of species. This is why Chambers (who cited Matthew's book in 1832) had to publish anonymously his heretical Vestiges of Creation. Famously, as Darwin admitted from the third edition of the Origin of Species onwards,  it was the Vestiges that paved the way for public acceptance of his own book in the second half of the 19th century.  With regard to proof of the treatment of Matthew's work as taboo in the first half of that century,  The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine published an extended review of it in the 1831 Part II and 1831 Part III numbers of the magazine; it praised Matthew's book in around 13,000 words and would say no more  on natural selection other than: "But we disclaim participation in his ruminations on the law of Nature."  Today, it seems that the truth of this independently verifiable fact is heretical, because Wikipedia - in trying to claim that Matthew's orignal ideas were not understood - denies that this text actually exists in the 19th century publication record, immediately deleting each and every mention of it (get the clickable citation to that literature and the  facts on Wikipedia's fact deleting behaviour here).  As Matthew explained to Darwin in the Gardener's Chronicle in his second letter of 1860, his book was banned by Perth library in Scotland for its heresy and another naturalist feared to teach its contents for fear of pillory punishment (seeSutton 2016 for the full facts). Loudon (1832), however was so bold as to write that Matthew appeared to have something original to say on the "origin of species", no less. These facts all prove that Matthew's ideas were understood. However, most of those who we knewly know cited Matthew's (1831) book would be unlikely to mention its distasteful heresy in print. Moreover, logically, they did not have to provide evidence in the literature that they fully understood Matthew's then heretical ideas, and they did not even have to fully understand everything about natural selection in his book to know that Matthew had written something on evolution to, therefore, be in a position to give Darwin and Wallace any kind of "heads-up" that Matthew's book might be worth looking at. Because, rationally, knowledge contamination can happen in at least the following three ways (from Sutton 2016):

Prior published unique ideas may contaminate the minds and work of others in three
main ways:

(a). Innocent Knowledge Contamination: The spread of original ideas in
a prior-publication via (a) subsequent published sources on the topic,
which failed to cite the Originator as their source, or (b) word of mouth
and/or correspondence to the replicator by those who read the Originator’s
work or communicated with others who did — understood its importance
in whole or simply in part — but failed to tell the replicator
about its existence.

(b). Reckless or Negligent Knowledge Contamination: (a) The replicator
reads the original publication, absorbs information such as original
ideas and examples and terms, but forgets having read it — and never
does remember. (b) The replicator reads the original publication and takes
notes, but forgets the source of the notes. (c) The replicator is told
about original ideas in a publication by someone — who understands
their importance in whole or simply in part — who explains they come
from a publication, but the replicator fails to ask the name of the author
and title of the publication.

(c). Deliberate Knowledge Contamination (science fraud): The replicator
reads the original publication, or is told about its contents, takes notes,
or is given notes, remembers this, but pretends otherwise.

FACTS 10. It is a fallacy (e.g see Stott 2013) that Matthew was quite content after Darwin's 1860 and 1861 acknowledgments of Matthew's prior-published the hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection. In reality, he fought untill his dying day for full recognition for his original and prior published (1831) deas, which Darwin replicated and continued to call "my theory". See the fully cited facts here.

Further Information

My position paper on this topic and details of all known published Darwinite defences to the New Data, along with my detailed and fully evidenced rebuttals to them, can be found on the relevant page on PatrickMatthew.com - Here

Conclusion

The facts re-write the history of discovery of natural selection.

Perhaps we need an independent Veracity Institute to address all issues where independently verifiable facts bust much loved paradigms and then meet fierce resistance from those whose career and financial interests are underpinned by keeping the punctured premises, which support those paradigms, inflated with de-facto fact-denial pseudo scholarship, cherry picking, cognitive  blindsight, propaganda, mythmongering, fallacy spreading, obscene abuse and downright lies.

Get You Some of That Veracity!
GYSOT-V