Editing Development of Darwin's theory (section)

===British Association: ''Vestiges'' and Wilberforce===
Darwin overcame illness to attend the [[British Association for the Advancement of Science]] meeting at [[Oxford]] in May 1847, to discuss the "Sketch" with Hooker. Darwin attended the geological section which featured a talk by [[Robert Chambers (journalist)|Robert Chambers]] on ancient beaches. An observer at the meeting reported that Chambers "pushed his conclusions to a most unwarrantable length and got roughly handled on account of it by Buckland, De la Beche, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Lyell. The last told me afterwards that he did so purposely that [Chambers] might see that reasonings in the style of the author of the Vestiges would not be tolerated among scientific men." This was a clear warning from Darwin's Cambridge friends.

On the Sunday [[Samuel Wilberforce]], now the Bishop of Oxford, used his sermon at St. Mary's Church on "the wrong way of doing science" to deliver a stinging attack obviously aimed at Chambers. The church "crowded to suffocation" with geologists, astronomers and zoologists heard jibes about the "half-learned" seduced by the "foul temptation" of speculation looking for a self-sustaining universe in a "mocking spirit of unbelief", showing a failure to understand the "modes of the Creator's acting" or to meet the responsibilities of a gentleman. Chambers denounced this as an attempt to stifle progressive opinion, but others thought he must have gone home "with the feeling of a martyr". Darwin was not present, but in the following week at the Association dissociated himself from the error-ridden ''Vestiges'' in Lyell's presence, attacking the author's "poverty of intellect" and dismissing it as a "literary curiosity."