The Strange Career of Homo Erectus, Part 1

Part 1

By Vern Crisler

Copyright 2011

In my estimation — which I estimate to be very estimable — Eugene Dubois is an example of a special kind of confirmation bias, which for want of a better term I will call confirmation bias.  I’m sure there is another term out there that will work better in describing it, but let someone else go look for  it.

Eugene Dubois was born in 1858 — when he was a baby, as it is unlikely that such an event would take place at any other stage of his life – and he was raised a Catholic.  However, very early on he was exposed to the evolution controversy in 1868.[1]  That was a day when Darwinists could go around and say just about anything they wanted to say, no matter how preposterous, in defense of their theory.  In fact we are still living in that day, but at least back then it was an original sort of preposterousness — when it still had that fresh new theory smell.

As Eugene reached his tenth year, Karl Vogt came wandering into town and lectured on, among other things, the closeness of man to the apes.  Now, if you’ve read our essay “The Great Chain of Being,” you may remember Vogt.  He was the sage who said the “Negro” was very close to the ape-type.  As noted, Darwinists could get away with that sort of thing, for it was all a part of their theory in those days.  Since the 1960s, however, that kind of talk is pretty much verboten.

Dubois absorbed Vogt’s views uncritically, and it never occurred to him to raise any doubts, for even as a boy he was already well on the way to rejecting the religion of Roman Catholicism and embracing the religion of Darwinism.  By the time he began his teaching career he was already well-versed in the mysteries of the new religion, and the dream of finding the “missing link” consumed him.  And it really was a dream for him.

I too had dreams in my younger days.  I used to wish upon stars because the song said if you wished upon a star your dream would come true.  When my first wish failed to materialize, I was disappointed.  I determined to carry out a general experiment and sought the support of many stars.  Each one was properly catalogued, and a recording was made of how long or involved each wish was.  A system was devised in which a degree of  difficulty could be assigned to each wish with reference to how likely its fulfillment would be given the strength of the star and what part of the  universe it was situated in.

Unfortunately, despite all of my efforts, I was never able to obtain any good results. The stars would invariably inquire as to who I was to wish upon a star.  I replied that according to the song, it makes no difference, but they thought it did make a difference — said they weren’t going to accommodate some song they hadn’t written and upon which they received no royalties.  I told them I thought this was unfair, but they laughed and said I should register to vote and put into office someone who cared.

Dubois had better luck.  He managed to find a way to Java where he could search the country-side.  He was after the “missing link,” an imagined transitional form between man and the apes, and like the true believer, he put all other things behind him and set sail.  Nothing could interfere with his dream.

I think the important thing to note is that Dubois assumed that a “transitional form” existed in the first place, then he set out to find it.  One is reminded of Constantine’s mother, Helena, by all accounts a pious woman and regarded as a saint by most denominations.  But she had one  failing.  Whenever some holy site or holy relic needed to be found in the Holy Land, she would go out there and make inquiries.  Before long, where others had invariably failed to “hook” a relic or holy site and bring back a respectable catch, she never failed of fetching one in.  She was very remarkable in that regard.

Dubois was like that, too.  He was a dreamer at heart, and the theory of evolution was more of a dream than a reality, a matter of genuflection and  ritual, and a willingness to believe in anything, no matter how unlikely, if it supported current Darwinian orthodoxy.  “[Dubois] did not yet know it,” says Shipman, “but part of the attraction he felt to evolutionary theory resulted from its ability to upset the old order.  The other part was the sheer scientific power [sic] of the theory.  He was drawn to it with an almost religious fervor.”[2]

In her biography, Shipman tells the story of Dubois from his earliest years to his struggles in Java.  It is interesting to note that in his later  years he turned his attention to young ladies.  Living in an apartment by himself in Haarlem, he advertised in the following way: “Wanted a servant-girl, not older than 25 years, for a gentleman living on his own.”  Shipman comments: “This advertisement did not attract the wholly respectable.  [Dubois] chose the prettier applicants, especially if they seemed to indicate by their look or their manner that they would not be averse to a little romance.”

Since he was no longer searching for Homo erectus, he could now spend his time searching for pliable young women for sexual favors: “Now that he was separated from Anna, he thought, it was not so wrong to seek his comforts elsewhere.  After all, he brought the girls from Limburg to the big city, Amsterdam, which was what they desired, and he gave them a comfortable home and a decent wage.  Was it so terrible that they wish to show their gratitude?  He knew he was no longer young, but he still thought himself attractive: he was powerful, knowledgeable, and still handsome.”[3]

Alas, many of the girls stole from him and then quit.  The last was a fair-haired country girl, who recoiled in horror after Dubois had given her a “little squeeze.”   “It was a debacle,” says Shipman.  “His servants changed so frequently, and were so good-looking and lazy, that the neighbours began to talk behind his back.  No wonder his wife refused to live with him any longer!”

After the country girl left, Dubois turned to his assistant for help:  “Finally, he begged Antje Schreuder to help him find an honest housekeeper, which she did.  Schreuder’s embarrassment was acute when, after only a few weeks, the woman came to her saying she had to leave the post with Dr Dubois.  ‘It seems,’ the woman said, holding herself very upright and stiff, ‘that you do not know him very well’. . . . With a hollow feeling in her stomach, [Schreuder] recalled all the rumours about Dubois’s appreciation of pretty women, rumours that she had dismissed as untrue.  Now she saw that his moral rectitude was nothing but a hypocritical sham.” [4]

So the famed discoverer of Homo erectus turned out to be an old lecher.

But what of his bad qualities you may ask?  In my opinion, the one bad quality that stands out above all is Dubois’ egotism, which led to paranoia and eventually isolation.  The fact of the matter is, his over-large ego became a hindrance to science.  It first manifested itself in his relationship  to his teacher Max Fürbringer, a widely known anatomist and former student of Ernst Haeckel.[5]  In 1881 Dubois accepted the position of  assistant to Fürbringer, who would eventually want Dubois to succeed him as professor of anatomy at Amsterdam.  In 1885, Dubois prepared his first  paper for publication in a scientific journal.   It was the usual sort of Darwinian tripe attempting to show that the human voice box evolved from the gill cartilage of fishes.  Before publishing the article, however, Dubois had a meeting with Fürbringer in which the latter offered suggestions,  including the idea that Dubois should reference Fürbringer’s own work on the subject.  “‘You know, Dubois,’” said Fürbringer, “‘this work is very important.  It completely confirms what I have been saying since about 1880: that the thyroid cartilage of the human larynx is derived from the fourth branchial arch.  Of course, you have heard me mention this idea in lectures.  I think that you ought to add a few sentences acknowledging my work on that matter, as it is so closely related to your topic.  It will strengthen your claim about the derivation of the mammalian larynx in general.’”[6]

Of course, the idea that any of this has something to do with fish gills is completely false.  Even evolutionary biologist PZ Myers admits  that the notion of embryological recapitulation was fraudulent:

“Haeckel’s theory was rotten at the  core.  It was wrong both in principle and  in the set of biased and manipulated observations used to prop it up.   This was a tragedy for science, because it set  evolutionary biologists and developmental biologists down a dead-end, leading  to an unfortunate divorce between the fields of development and evolution that  has only recently been corrected [sic].[7]

Aside from the silliness of the  recapitulation idea, Fürbringer’s request was perfectly reasonable.  Dubois had learned what he knew about anatomy  under Fürbringer’s guidance, and even if he had come up with some new  anatomical discovery on his own, it was bad form not to give some credit to his  teacher.  In addition, being associated  with a well-known scientist such as Fürbringer would certainly have enhanced  his own reputation.  Dubois acquiesced  and revised his paper in order to mention Fürbringer, but his egotism blinded  him to the benefits of this, and fueled resentment instead.  Even his promotion to Lecturer the next year  failed to quell the hostility he now felt toward Fürbringer.

When Dubois was asked to contribute  a paper to a scientific volume prepared by a fellow scientist, he did everything he could to block Fürbringer’s access to his work: “The more  Fürbringer tried to help, the more furtive Dubois grew.  Soon he was reluctant to discuss his ideas or  work with any of his colleagues.  He  became withdrawn, touchy, almost feverish, as if he were being literally  poisoned with suspicion.”[8]

Shipman refers to Dubois’ problem as  an “obsession with priority.”[9]  With the discovery of more Neanderthal  remains in 1887, and their (false) interpretation as a primitive race that  confirmed human evolution, Dubois was suddenly taken with the idea of finding Haeckel’s  imaginary missing link.  That combined  with his (false) belief that fish gills developed into larynxes, led him to  break completely with Fürbringer in order to “go in search of greater  scientific glory.”[10]

This penchant for combining false  ideas with an egotistical obsession with priority would lead Dubois not only to  reject scientific criticism of his Homo erectus finds, but also later to  isolate such finds from scientific scrutiny.  In the former case, Dubois was so wedded to his missing link idea, he  could not accept its denial by other scientists such as English paleontologist  Richard Lydekker, or zoologist Paul Matschie, or dean of German science Rudolf Virchow,  who used his research to undermine racism, and was both an opponent of  Darwinian dogma and a defender of the freedom of scientific inquiry.[11]  The criticisms of other scientists such as  Herman ten Kate, Rufolf Martin, and Daniel Cunningham were also rejected.  In Dubois’ view, their criticism only  reflected their resentment of his being the Man Who Found the Missing Link.  It was Fürbringer all over again.[12]

During his later years, Dubois’s  increasing paranoia led him to make the Homo erectus fossils unavailable for  scientific inspection.  Virchow had complained about this early on, but Dubois dismissed such criticism: “Does he  want me to hand my baby over to him, lifting her out of her very cradle?  Shall I entrust her to him, the man who above all others has doubted my word and impugned  my scholarship?  Virchow is too used to  having his own way in everything in Germany, that is what is wrong with  him.  He can be rude and insulting to German scholars and they still kowtow to him and defer to his opinion.  Well, I am under no such obligation to him,  and I shall not do it.”[13]

This is ironic because a month later Dubois would go to Liege and study the Neanderthal fossils, which were  available for scientists to study.  He  discovered to his chagrin that his Homo erectus skull was similar to the  Neanderthal skulls from Spy.  He had  previously rejected the view that Homo erectus was just another  Neanderthal.  Shipman says, “It was a  revelation.  He was surprised by their  appearance, for all that he had read the descriptions and studied the published  photographs closely.  There was indeed a  similarity in overall skull shape to his P.e.,  a compelling one.”[14]

Incidentally, this is why fossils  should be readily accessible to scientists.  Written descriptions and photographs sometimes leave out crucial information.  Dubois’s priority obsession, however, would not let him see that his Homo erectus material should  be equally available to scientists.[15]

It got worse.  By the turn of the century, Dubois was so  afraid some other scientist would “steal his glory” that he refused to allow anyone access to the Homo erectus fossils.  He had resented the fact that the anatomist Gustav Schwalbe, one of his  own supporters, had filled up his new Darwinist rag, Journal of Morphology and Anthropology, with a long description and  analysis of the Home erectus skull.  Dubois’s  egotism reared up again.  He could not  stand anyone else sharing the spotlight with him regarding Homo erectus, so he  was filled with the usual resentment:  “It was his, and Schwalbe had stolen it.  Dubois would never forgive him, nor ever trust another so naively.”[16]

So Dubois turned his back on  science and refused to allow anyone to see the fossils: “There was no more to do with those few, wonderful fossils, and he knew from bitter experience that  if he allowed someone else to study them, that man would attempt to steal his  glory.  That would not happen again, he vowed: never.  He put the bones away in  their special cases and locked them away in their own special cabinet at the  Teyler Museum.  He rarely took them out,  only sometimes in the afternoons if he was feeling melancholy.”[17]

Dubois took a supercilious attitude  to the Selenka expedition, a two-year attempt to find more Homo erectus material at Trinil, the original find site of the fossils.[18]  In addition, Aleš Hrdlička, the skeptic of  the Piltdown finds, attempted to reach Dubois in person and ask about studying the Homo erectus fossils, but was rebuffed.  This led Hrdlička to write the following about Homo erectus, a virtual  echo of Virchow’s previous complaints:

“On account of the peculiar  circumstances an attempt to describe first hand the important pieces under  consideration met with serious difficulties.  It would surely seem proper and desirable that specimens of such value  to science should be freely accessible to well qualified investigators and that  accurate casts be made available to scientific institutions. . . .”[19]

By 1915, paleontologists were  attacking Dubois’s restrictions on access to the fossils.  American Henry F. Osborn led the way, with Frenchman Marcellin Boule adding his voice as well.  A letter from Osborn to Louis Bolk, of the  Royal Academy of Science of the Netherlands, brought the latter to scold  Dubois, that he was tarnishing the reputation of Dutch science.  The Academy instructed Dubois to make the  fossils of Homo erectus accessible to fellow scientists.[20]

To fulfill this obligation Dubois  eventually invited Hrdlička and his students to study the original fossils.  Osborn’s student J. H. McGregor was next, then Dubois made casts for Osborn’s exhibit the “Hall of the Age of  Man.”

We started out by saying Dubois  provides a good example of confirmation bias, and now I think you can see  why.  He began with preconceived ideas,  was obsessed with the glory of priority, suspected that his colleagues were  trying to steal his ideas, refused to take criticism seriously, and finally  horded scientific information until forced to release it.  In short, Dubois exhibited all that a  scientist shouldn’t be.

Now, I’m not saying that scientists  shouldn’t have large egos.  I wouldn’t  say that I shouldn’t have a large ego.  In fact, in my case, I’ve recently  discovered that I may be descended from French royalty on my mother’s  side.  For that reason, I’ve determined it is not proper for me to associate with common folk as if there were no distance between us.  It is a general maxim that  royalty cannot associate with the common folk or there is a loss of that  essential respect for a hallowed institution which has always restrained the masses, and has given them a light to lighten their path.  It has not yet been established with  certainty that I’m descended from royalty — and my mother is somewhat doubtful  — but I don’t see the need to take chances.

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[1] Pat Shipman, The Man Who Found the Missing Link,  London: Orion Books, 2001, p. 13.

[2] Shipman, pp. 19-20.

[3] Shipman, p. 421.

[4] Shipman, pp. 421-22.

[5] Shipman, p. 28.

[6] Shipman, p. 49.

[7] PZ Myers, at: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/wells_and_haeckels_embryos.php.  See also a creationist assessment: http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j18_1/j18_1_71-75.pdf.

[8] Shipman, p. 54.

[9] Shipman, p. 60.

[10] Shipman, p. 64.

[11] Rudolf Virchow, The Freedom of Science in the Modern States,  1878.

[12] Shipman, p. 300.

[13] Shipman, p. 319.

[14] Shipman, p. 320.

[15] Marvin L. Lubenow cites this  lack of access to fossils as a major problem in paleontology.  See his Bones  of Contention, 2004, pp. 21ff.

[16] Shipman, pp. 354, 355.

[17] Shipman, p. 366.

[18] Shipman, p. 372.

[19] Quoted in Shipman, p. 386.

[20] Shipman, p. 405.