In March 1855 Hermann Blumenau, founder of a colony for German immigrants in southern Brazil, wrote to his fellow countryman Hermann Trommsdorff about Trommsdorff's nephews August and Fritz Müller. Blumenau considered the brothers’ work habits an example for other settlers, but expressed concern about the influence of Fritz's atheism on the moral structure of the community and lamented that Fritz was burying himself like a hermit in the forest of Itajaí valley. This letter is excerpted in Darwin's Man in Brazil: The Evolving Science of Fritz Müller, by the late David A. West. Blumenau's concerns seem an almost prophetic synthesis of Müller's tendency to hard work as a settler and naturalist and the cardinal roles that atheism, rational thought and the tropical rainforest were to play in his life after reading Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859).
This is West's second book about Müller. The first, Fritz Müller – A Naturalist in Brazil (Pocahontas Press, 2003) – was a biography based on Fritz Müller: Werke, Briefe und Leben (1915–21), by Müller's cousin Alfred Möller. Darwin's Man narrates Müller's early life in Germany, his father's influence, the university years, the PhD title at 22, his mother's death, the aversion to religion and inclination towards rationalism and humanist liberalism. Readers are led through the emigration of the Müller brothers and their families to Brazil, the years Fritz lived on the coast, the growth of the family, the return to Itajaí valley as a provincial naturalist. Readers follow Müller's expanding scientific network, troubles with the ever-changing Brazilian political scenarios, the invitation to and dismissal from the job of travelling naturalist of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro.
The events of Müller's life in Brazil are like the banks of a river through which runs the book's main subject: the central importance of Darwin's evolutionary theory for Müller, and of Müller as Darwin's scientific co-worker. Gustavo Caponi discusses in ‘El viviente y su medio: antes y después de Darwin’ (Scientiae Studia, 4: 1 (2006), 9–43) how the Darwinian revolution radically transformed natural history. Before Darwin, the naturalist was basically a collector working for the museums’ anatomists. In the Darwinian approach the search for organisms’ evolutionary history demanded mastery over multiple disciplines. The ultimate keys to life were no longer on the anatomist's table, but, rather, in nature. West observes that Müller's criteria for systematic relationships were initially morphological, until he read the Origin. Müller wrote to Darwin saying he was ‘converted’, initiating research that resulted in his book Für Darwin (1864), translated as Facts and Arguments for Darwin (1869), where Müller declared that Darwin's theory ‘gave nature meaning and significance’.
West demonstrates how the two-way relationship with Darwin from 1865 opened up for Müller a channel for scientific exchange with the naturalist, a network of peers and publishing opportunities for his research in Brazil. On the front line of field research, Müller produced valuable and varied evidence supporting Darwin's theory. In Darwin's Man the reader sees Darwin declaring himself the greatest admirer of Müller's powers of observation and naming him ‘the prince of observers’. This relationship ended only in 1882, with the death of Darwin, mourned by Müller as ‘a second father’. The evidence of this special relationship encourages West to claim that Müller was ‘Darwin's closest intellectual kin’– a bold statement, given how numerous were Darwin's correspondents. Furthermore, West presents neither statistical evidence nor objective criteria in support of his claim. Nevertheless, one should read the book before deciding about the validity of West's claim.
Müller's affiliation to Darwinism widened significantly his previous network. Political allies, journal editors and diverse fellow scientific correspondents step in and out of West's book. This network reflected Müller's multiple interests. His research moved from crustaceans through jellyfish to molluscs, leaf-cutter ants, stingless bees, termites, aquatic insects, butterflies, to bromeliads, orchids and climbing plants, while the subjects jumped from embryonic development, through parasitism, pollination, phyllotaxis and metamorphosis to sexual selection and mimicry. All research was, however, guided by a common thread: Darwin's evolutionary theory.
Atheism is also important in the book. Müller was an atheist long before reading Darwin, but the rational foundations of Müller's scientific materialism were strengthened by Darwin's rejection of all things supernatural. When Müller's first Darwinian work, exploring crustacean development, was published a British reviewer declared that ‘Dr Müller's moral code is rather crustacean than Christian’ (p. 69).
West observes that, despite the scientific honours Müller received during his lifetime, his contribution to Darwinism was largely under-recognised by his peers, and even today Müller's historical importance remains poorly known. West lists likely reasons: first, Für Darwin had little impact outside Germany. Second, unlike his fellow pioneers Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, Müller never wrote a ‘travel book’ about his adventures. Third, Müller never synthesised his themes, nor dedicated himself to philosophical speculations. Fourth, for a long time the only available biography of Müller was the one by Möller, in difficult German. Furthermore, the role played by non-British Darwinists is usually underestimated by historians of biology.
There is one further reason why, according to West, Müller was not specially well-regarded: he wasn't appreciated by taxonomists. The opposite was also true. In a report for the National Museum, Müller complained that there were too many anatomists limited to dried museum species, wasting time in fruitless discussions and disregarding the biological bases for natural classification, unavailable to ‘dry-skin philosophers’.
Darwin's Man’s 30 illustrations display the Blumenau colony and Müller's property, relatives and scientific drawings. One picture shows a middle-aged man with a long beard and a shoulder bag, wearing a rustic hat, a shirt and turned-up trousers. Facing the reader, with a staff in his right hand, and barefoot, he could be taken for a common settler. He was indeed a settler, but hardly an ordinary one. It is a full portrait of Müller at 65, in his daily work garments. In 1897, ’a German lawyer spoke at Müller's grave, recalling the ‘plain settler's garb … a man of the greatest imaginable simplicity and modesty with the most princely intellect’ (p. 231). Müller's modesty was, paradoxically, a motive for pride. Apologising to his friend Ernst Krause in 1877 for the fact that that his scientific apparatus consisted only of a magnifying glass, a pocket knife and a pencil, Müller was stressing his ability to compensate for the scarcity of technological resources with his highly developed investigatory skills. Likewise, in 1869, investigating termites, he explained to an entomologist that he easily found new species because other naturalists didn't carry an axe with which to explore inside their nests’. Furthermore, his sharp senses were research tools, as when, employing olfactory skills, Müller inaugurated the study of butterflies’ sexual scents.
There are common points between the lives of Müller and his biographer. A former teacher at Virginia Tech University, David West was trained in genetics and ornithology, until a late interest in butterflies led him to Brazilian forests in 1982, when he stumbled upon Fritz's history. West benefited from the crucial help of his wife Lindsay in the long, hard and ultimately successful search for primary sources. In a letter to Müller from December 1882 Darwin lamented that old age was telling on him. Müller replied in March, apologising for his delay in answering, but the letter arrived in England ‘too late’, in West's words: Darwin had died. Ironically, lateness was also manifested in the history of the book itself. When the news arrived that Darwin's Man was accepted for publication, in 2015, West was gravely ill. While Lindsay managed the editing, their daughter Susan, on West's deathbed, helped with the list of illustrations. Unfortunately, West didn't live to see his book published in 2016. ‘Came too late’, he remarked to his wife. Too late for West, but not for his readers. West had no formal training in history, and his book is not a historiographical thesis, but a study by a field biologist about a wronged pioneer of his academic field. In the introduction West states that Müller, along with Wallace and Bates, were second only to Darwin, among the greatest naturalists of the nineteenth century. Of the three, only Müller was neglected by historians of sciences. One of the main purposes of this book, West asserts, is to place Müller in that pantheon. This purpose has undoubtedly been fully accomplished, and Darwin's Man in Brazil is a fundamental work for those interested in Darwinism and natural history.
