Butler VS. Darwin

While reading Samuel Butler’s “Deadlock in Darwinism” a few weeks ago, it was easy to see the arguments he was making against Darwin and it made me wonder if he had a personal grudge against Darwin or if it was purely about his work. After finding out the history between Darwin and Butler it is easier to understand the arguments. Butler had some issues with The Origin of Species and had tried to contact Darwin to discuss it but Darwin ignored his requests which most likely made Butler mad so Butler decided to write expansively about Darwin’s work in a negative way because of him being ignored. Butler makes an argument that Darwin did not publish original work and that he stole the ideas from other sources which seems legitimate at first but after looking deeper we realize that Darwin was just stating what other scientists had said but failed to publish and make public to the world. Darwin wanted the fame and the money so he wrote about evolution and natural selection in a very convincing way so people would not go against him. Butler argued that evolution and natural selection are common sense and Darwin kind of took the idea and stated it in his own words and people obviously accepted it because there is no way to deny evolution which I think was great. If you can publish work that nobody can deny then isn’t that the goal of all scientists and theorists?