News Main
Animals
Archaeology
Dinosaurs
Earth
History
Human Animal
Space
Tech

Darwin's Pianist Wife Influenced Theories

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

After marveling how his daughter Annie shared his mother's aptitude for the piano, Derry said Darwin wrote, "If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited -- and I think it can be shown that this does sometimes happen -- then the resemblance between what originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as to not be distinguished."

According to Randall Keynes, a conservationist who is the great great grandson of Darwin, Annie was her father's favorite child, making her death at the young age of 10 all the more difficult.

Peter Bowler, a professor of anthropological studies at Queen's University, Belfast, and a Darwin expert, wrote that, "following Annie's death, Darwin became much less tolerant of traditional Christian beliefs and far more open to the view that nature was a scene of relentless struggle and suffering."

Bowler added, "No more would Darwin compromise with the past: natural theology was dead for him, and he would develop his theory in a way that would throw down the gauntlet to those who were still trusting in the old platitudes."

Emma, however, continued to play piano for her husband until he died at home in 1882.

HowStuffWorks.com: Charles Darwin

The Darwin Correspondence Project

Darwin Digital Library of Evolution