But why
Darwin arrived
so late?

Premise
More or less half of the twentieth century, the Russian geneticist Dmitri Belyaev, breeding silver foxes, did an experiment. Selected foxes after they divided into three classes: those that do not let the insistent caressing and biting, those who allow themselves to at least touch, but which, however, preferred to stay on their way and the most docile, those that approached the man with some degree of confidence. Within a few generations - six, only six - "the domesticated foxes not only behaved like dogs, but they had also taken their appearance. They lost the sumptuous fur and became as black and white collie Welsh. The typical pointed ears were replaced with pendulous ears like a dog. The tail, rather than limp, he made straight as that of the dog. Females had the inspiration every six months as bitches, instead of once a year as the Foxes "and not only, as reported in Belyaev, began to bark. Here is a case of changing before our eyes. Similar stories can be made on the guppy fish - they change shape and color of the spots on the back in relation to the rocks of the streams where they live - on the lizards of Pod Mrcaru - that in just thirty-seven years evolved towards herbivorous diet - or about bacteria - which, in the laboratory, were subjected to evolutionary processes related to forty-five thousand generations (the average of six or seven a day). In short, evolution is not only a matter of a very long time which we could never be a witness, is also a matter of almost here and now and can not be ignored. However.

1. In her rich and passionate argument in defense of evolution expressed in The greatest show on earth (Mondadori, Milan 2011), the biologist Richard Dawkins - I have to the previous examples - a question, which at first may seem very trivial, but why Darwin has come so late? History of science at hand - human observational skills, common sense - a Darwin, a Darwin any, not a giant of culture like Charles, he could emerge long before the nineteenth century?
In response, Dawkins accepts in full the argument that was already Eduard Mayr, the biologist who, until such time as they played their one hundred years - and his time - never tired of pointing out the consistency of the theory of evolution. Darwin came so late because of Plato. These should, in fact, the theory of '"essentialism" - a theory so pernicious, invasive and tough to make Darwin - sums up Dawkins - appeared "on the scientific scene with an absurd late because all of us, it is not known if because of Greek influence, or for some other reason, we focus on the essentialism etched into the DNA of mind. ".

2. Given the gravity and the epidemicity of evil, then, be well to see things more clearly. First, the thought of rebuilding as Mayr puts it in his basic history of biological thought (Basic Books, London 1990).
Plato, then, according to Mayr would have been an irretrievable "geometer" - one for which a triangle, regardless of the configuration of the corners, always has the shape of a triangle. For him "the changing world of phenomena was not merely a reflection of a limited number of fixed and invariant forms, Eide (as Plato called them), or essences, as they were called by the Thomists of the Middle Ages." From this point of view "a real change (...) is possible only by jumps through the origin of new species." Now, since - as argued by the "unique blend of mathematical and mystical" that Whitehead - the entire European philosophical tradition is nothing more that "a series of footnotes to Plato" - it goes without saying that this essentialism, " with its insistence on the discontinuity, the endurance and the typical values ('type'), dominated the thinking of the Western world to an extent that it is not yet fully assessed by historians of ideas. " There is added, then, that the philosophy of essentialism "is well suited to the thinking of physicists whose 'class' consisted of the same magnitude, they were sodium atoms, protons, or pi-mesons", and you understand better the reason for his success. Even Alfred Russel Wallace - who came inland independent conclusions similar to those of Darwin -, on the other hand, suffered so much the weight of this tradition to call his fundamental article of the variety tendency to move away indefinitely from the original type.
Essentialism, then, was "the most insidious of all philosophies" and "natural history, until the time of Darwin, continued to be dominated" by a metaphysics of responsibility for which can not be raised even Aristotle, at least on this side, did not alter much of Plato's thought - so much so that, in De animalium generatione says that "man and the kinds of animals and plants are eternal" and that, consequently, neither could disappear or be created.
Darwin was one of the first thinkers to reject ("at least in part") essentialism, but - according to Mayr - was not at all understood by the philosophers of his time ("they were all essentialist"), and his concept of Evolution by natural selection was therefore considered unacceptable. The evolution, as was explained by Darwin, however, is "necessary step" and therefore "incompatible with essentialism."
In fact some topic "promising" for the development of evolutionary thought in Plato's philosophical production that preceded it could find - think of Empedocles, for Anaximenes to Xenophanes, Anaxagoras and Democritus to the infinity of time and reflection on spontaneous generation, the changes in the climate or the ontogenetic process of the individual - but already with Parmenides, and, above all, Pythagoras, and finally, with Plato everything was sacrificed for the reason that derives from geometric and essentialism.

3. At a guess, then, if we keep clearly in mind the weight of the Catholic Church and dogma anti-evolutionist that characterized the doctrine - the Darwinian natural selection, in practice, explains the adjustment without resorting to any force mysteriously foreordained towards an end - , we could close it there. Why Darwin arrived so late it would seem clear. Needless to say, to the power of evolution do not hear about much with the Islamic religion.

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882)

4.But to me it does not add up. I wonder where he jumps out of this essential principle and to serve that function plays in the apparatus of Plato's argumentative. I quickly discover, then, that this principle was established to cover a contradiction. Famous is the "myth of the cave" with which Plato tries to explain his theory of knowledge.
You are talking about human nature and his education (or lack of his education) and Plato has recourse to a comparison, imagine men chained since childhood - still, unable even to look left or right - in an underground cave, imagine a fire behind them and other men who, up a lane, carrying stuff. Of this stuff that the prisoners would not see the shadows on the walls. Needless to say, then, that for them what they see is real and goes without saying that if someone were to say something of the carriers, the prisoners would attribute the words passing shadow. So then, are things for all humanity? Not at all, because the story - because it consistently seeks to demonstrate - including at least three other chapters. In the former, Plato considers the case where a prisoner was released and could turn his head, then toward the light: for the mistake would be unable to distinguish what they first saw the shadows and if someone would explain how it is Things did not believe, would feel things more real than those seen before that are shown now. In the second, Plato takes into account also the case that the released prisoner was forcibly dragged to the exit of the cave. Needless to say, once the light of the sun, would have serious difficulty seeing objects that are out there and would need some time to get used to the new situation. Guess, its perceptual process through three phases: the first would see shadows, then reflections in water and, finally, the real things. Among these real things, which received the last of the sun would be just that - finally saw the place as it is and where it is.
In the third, Plato considers the possibility of an act of philanthropy of the prisoner. Compassionate towards his former fellow prisoners, back in the cave. Needless to say, first, encounter new difficulties to get used to the darkness, then, it goes without saying that the companions scoff, saying that, after so much adventure, go home with eyes damaged, which is conceded to believe him, and that could, if they strangled him with his own hands.
The world as we know it is the view of the cave, the fire is the sun, the rise and the slow acquisition of the higher reality is the soul's ascent to knowledge. It does not take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the lucky star of the transition - from darkness to light, the rise toward being - is the philosopher, who, through unbelief in stepping into rod for all of us, that he understands embarked on what, Plato's biography in hand, for many it will be a "dangerous profession."
The question of why and wherefore the things which are really comes true, however, is still there, exactly as before. We say, then, that the theory expressed in The Republic presupposes another, that expressed in the Meno and Phaedo, and reiterated in the Phaedrus.
"Since the soul is immortal and born again, and he contemplated all things, both here and in Hades," Meno says, "there is nothing that has not learned." The soul has seen and known throughout the universe in its entirety - the reality of the here and the afterlife - no wonder if this soul, then, will also be able to remember all the good things learned. Indeed, remember one thing, others may follow as the cherries. Learning is reminiscent, to know - as it says in the Phaedo - is to remember. The Socrates of Plato, then, does not skimp spectacular demonstration of the thesis asks Meno to call one of his servants and began an interrogation in which, starting from square area to discover a series of mathematical truths, that instead to consider how the consequences of the premises, categorizes the results as a "road of reminiscence" shrewdly obtained.
The essentialism of Plato, then - this escapes to Mayr, and also escapes Dawkins - is a derivative of its essential untenable theory of knowledge - be the exact copy of a whole already done so - or, put another way, of her "realism" that has informed himself the methodological apparatus of science for centuries to come without even today - after Darwin - lose something of its power conditioner.

5. If this is so, I say, the obstacle was not only Plato. The theory of knowledge is the basis of any one philosophy and philosophy, as Whitehead said in his own way, has been exempt from the Platonic problem. Darwin is not only arrived late because of Plato, but because of philosophy as such and glitches that still carries - for example, when speaking of "evolution," would seem to assign an order to the process - yet residues of the lack of awareness on the use of mental categories.

6.Subject - again - that the question - why Darwin has come so late? - You might even meet - with presumed legitimacy - even in a completely different way. Oh, fine, but is it really true that Darwin arrived late? Could it be that, more simply, Darwin - a Darwin, at least one - has come from time immemorial, and as much else, they have been deftly removed the traces?
After all, with the heliocentric theory - that of Aristarchus of Samos Copernicus well before - we went near a certain extent was available since about three hundred years before the birth of Christ, but it took almost eighteen hundred years to have a version - that of Copernicus - ratified by the Community of the learned. In light of this experience - and many other decently documented, such as those reconstructed by Lucio Russo in The Lost Revolution (Feltrinelli, Milan 1996) - Darwin might ask how many have been made to disappear.

Felice Accame