Impossible Monsters

On the surface, this is a book about people who discovered ancient skeletons (of dinosaurs and humans).

But mostly it’s a book about epistemology, about what you can say in public, and about how these two influence each other.

Ancient skeletons are a difficult problem in 19th-century Britain: if a species dies out, does it mean that God made a mistake? Since there was only one week of creation, what do you with the fact that birds seem to grow out of dinosaurs? How much weirdness can you sweep under the flood?

In early 19th century, a suggestion of a dangerous thought might get you banned from any social and professional life, but by 1871 Darwin can publish The Descent of Man, which not only fully accepts extinctions, but also replaces “God created man in his own image” with evolution.

I would like to understand this transition better: sure, bones have helped, but other social changes have helped paleontologists to discuss their progress publicly. What drove this change?

In particular, half of the scientists in this book seem to have rejected Christianity because of the regular old “God wouldn’t have allowed this child to die from a random disease this early”. Had this sentiment been common, Christianity wouldn’t survive the Middle Ages. However, child mortality for Victorian-era upper classes was already several times lower than for anyone before the 19th century, so maybe it was fair for them to have higher expectations?

This is also a book about Richard Owen being a dick to everyone who disagreed with him.