Westminster Abbey is the home of the tombs of two of Britain's and the World’s greatest scientists (among other greats like Stephen Hawking): Newton and Darwin. Both were Cambridge students and both were neurodiverse. In the case of Isaac Newton, it is obvious: ASD. In the case of Charles Darwin, it’s much less so.
Charles Darwin is my personal greatest scientific hero of all time. Newton may have changed the world far more than Darwin ever could. However, Darwin helped us understand ourselves much more than any other scientist will ever be able to achieve. People have been reluctant to admit that Darwin’s ideas are equally well applicable to humans as they are to animals, and this includes our minds. Evolutionary Psychology is still a young and controversial science at 30 years of age, but I have no doubts that people in 30 more years will look back and find it hard to understand how we could not see the relevance of Darwin’s idea when it comes to our minds. Until then, it’s well worth trying to understand Darwin’s own life which is riddled with questions
Many people have tried to diagnose Darwin, who was physically ill for the last 40 years of his life, without the doctors ever being able to find a physical cause. Young Charles was not a particularly good student and mostly bored at school (perhaps a sign of ADD). We also know that he couldn’t bear the sight of blood, which made the career as a doctor his father had in mind impossible for him. Charles’ life was plagued by anxiey and worries (high in neuroticism). Among the anxiety disorders he may have had:
- Hemophobia (fear of seeing blood)
- Social Anxiety
- Agoraphobia
- Panic Disorder
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder
- OCD
- Avoidant Personality Disorder
Alas for this buddle of fear, this is not where his trouble ended. His stomach was another source of endless pain and the diagnoses include:
- Crohn's Disease
- Inflammatory bowel disease
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Cyclical vomiting
- Gastritis
- Lactose intolerance
We know that gastrointestinal problems are a common comorbidity of neurodiversity, as are anxiety and depression (another one of Darwin’s ailments). What’s more, Darwin was a great pattern-seeker, a trait typically found in people with ASD. There probably was never anyone who could read nature better than him. His many intuitions would keep biologists busy for decades to come. The problem he had with the peacock’s tail was only solved in 1975 by Amotz Zahavi (handicap principle), more than a century after the publication of The Origin of Species.
What we get here are almost all comorbidities of ASD without ASD itself. There is also a very distinct trait that distinguishes Darwin from the typical scientist on the spectrum (Tesla, Cavendish, Newton, Einstein): high agreeableness. It’s not that neurodiverse people aren’t nice people, most of them actually are. They are low on agreeableness because of their struggle with cognitive empathy.
Darwin was a highly empathetic person and people generally considered him very pleasant company. He shied away from controversy and he almost couldn't publish his work because he was afraid he could hurt his beloved religious wife Emma.
Darwin’s Big 5 profile thus differs only in this one trait from the typical scientist.
Charles Darwin Big 5 profile | ||||
openness | conscientiousness | extraversion | agreeableness | neuroticism |
high | low | low | high | high |
The most common personality profiles for scientists in MBTI (Myers-Briggs) would be INTP (Einstein, Curie) or INTJ (Newton, Tesla). Even though Darwin is usually typed as an INTP, it seems that he was more likely an INFP. His dislike for algebra may well be an indication of that. The American anthropologist Helen Fisher would probably agree with me here as she considers Darwin a “negotiator” type (~NF in MBTI) rather than a “director” (~NT in MBTI) and lists him as an exemplar of this type together with Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
People with this personality type (e.g. Shakespeare, Orwell and Kafka) become more often poets and novelists rather than scientists. This would also explain why he hesitated so long to publish his ideas. NF types hate conflict and Darwin was certainly aware of the controversy his ideas would stir. A true INTP like Richard Dawkins would not have hesitated that much. Nor did Thomas Huxley (INTJ), who famously became Darwin’s bulldog. There was not only grandeur in Darwin’s view of the world, there was also magic and poetry.
I have made a short collection of hunter-gatherer personalities. Check it out on Amazon:
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