Many critics have long complained about Intelligent Design books published for popular consumption. As one participant of our blog argued:

No one can stop you from inferring an intelligent designer, just as no one can stop you from inferring a real Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. If you want convince others, however, then get off your lazy a** and do some actual research that produces positive results. Pop pseudoscience books with wild unsubstantiated claims (i.e. Privileged Planet) and empty internet verbiage will never cut it in the rigorous scientific world"¦

While I can certainly appreciate the desire to see ID "cut it in the rigorous scientific world," it's not clear that ID hypotheses can be accommodated and processed in the current scientific milieu. But that's not the main point for today.

There is a place for such popular books in the history of science. In fact, we can argue that one "pop pseudoscience book" played an important role in helping Charles Darwin get out his theory.

Fifteen years before Darwin published his book, another book by Robert Chambers was published, entitled, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.

Chambers was a successful businessman who originally intended to write a book on phrenology. According to Michael Ruse (in The Evolution-Creation Struggle), phrenology "appealed to persons wanting to sweep away the old modes of acting and thinking and replace them with modern science, which, applied with proper training and education, would make for a better and happier society all around."

However, Chambers decided to turn his attention to evolution. As Ruse notes, "Evolution, in Chambers's hands, was an idea of the same ilk, for the facts were secondary to the primacy of the ideology. Evolution, like phrenology, was a vehicle for pushing doctrines of progress."

In other words, prior to Darwin, evolution was a pseudoscience and Chambers was its lead barker. His book sold very well and was read by many of the intellectuals, sparking debates and creating an appetite for more talk and debate about evolution. You can read a little more about Chambers here.

But here's the key - one must wonder what science would look like today if Chambers had not published his book, given that Chambers's book set the stage for Darwin. As Michael Ruse points out:

Even if Vestiges was wrong, the idea of evolution, like the idea of progress, was now a familiar fixture on the intellectual and popular landscape. By the 1850s in Britain, whether the establishment scientists wanted it that way or not, evolutionary ideas were becoming known and less threatening. They could even be inspiring. And that was no small thing. They were hardly in any sense respectable, judged as professional science. But they were no longer so tense-making.

Chambers's book on evolution did more than prepare the way for Darwin. It actually helped Darwin himself, as Darwin was quite aware of this book and how it was being received. As this page notes, "It showed Darwin what obstacles he would have to overcome to win wide acceptance for his own theory of evolution." This helps us understand how Darwin turned the pseudoscience of evolution into a real science. It explains why Origins steered away from political and metaphysical messages. It explains why Darwin didn't excitedly join in with those who, like Chambers and Huxley, promoted spontaneous generation. But there is more.

Consider the following juicy point from Mike Taylor:

Vestiges may be almost forgotten today, but it inspired Alfred Russel Wallace to go and hunt the evidence for evolution in tropical jungles, whence one day he wrote the famous letter which levered Charles Darwin out of the closet with On the Origin of Species. In no way did Vestiges have the depth and scientific credibility of that book, but it had gone before, drawing much waiting flak and getting the world used to the idea of evolution, however superficially, from Punch cartoons to Tennysonian poetry.

It was Chambers's "pop pseudoscience book" that inspired Wallace to independently discover natural selection and thus prod Darwin into rushing his own work into the public arena!

The bottom line is that while most "pop pseudoscience books" end up in the trash bin of history, some have played an important role in the development of science itself.

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