Articles
What's the connection between Charles Darwin and split infinitives?
29 June 2008
Answer: popular myth. That "Survival of the Fittest" encapsulates Darwinian evolution theory and that split infinitives are bad grammar are two of a kind that also includes:
- humans use only 10 per cent of their brains1
- the Inuit or Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow2
- lemmings deliberately and en masse run over cliff tops to their deaths3
The Survival of the Fittest myth
You could probably make good money betting on whether Survival of the Fittest was "a Darwinian concept" or any number of similar propositions.
The phrase was actually coined by Herbert Spencer to describe his extreme political views. It didn’t appear in Darwin’s Origin of the Species until the fifth of its six editions (the first edition is generally considered the best).
Despite this late inclusion it is a poor way to describe evolution. Why? Consider the peacock's tail. Briefly, peacocks with the biggest and brightest tails get the most mates and have the most offspring. In Darwinian terms (competition to reproduce) this is success. However, in survival terms, a large, conspicuous tail is a disadvantage as it is more likely to attract predators and hinder flight from danger. This is just one example of why the phrase doesn't work in terms of evolution theory. There are many others.
The split infinitive myth
The myth of the split infinitive is a little older.
In The Language Instinct Harvard professor Steven Pinker emphatically states that there is "no conceivable reason" why we should not split infinitives in the English language. As well as setting out why the alleged rule has no technical foundation, he examines its historical origin. This lies in the competition for sales between various English style guides in eighteenth-century London – a process which accounts for most of the "hobgoblins of contemporary prescriptive grammar". He cites the famous Star Trek mission statement: "… to boldly go where no man has gone before" and asks "to go boldly … ?" His conclusion: "Beam me up Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here."4
Another uncompromising splitter of infinitives was author Raymond Chandler who once famously wrote to his editor:
Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.5
Some concepts are hard to express without splitting the infinitive. For example, if the chairman of a football club were to tell the manager "your job is really to make the club a success" this could be interpreted as "stay out of boardroom politics and concentrate on football matters." However, if he were to say "your job is to really make the club a success" this might mean "make sure we win the league this year."6 To express the latter you must either split the infinitive or completely rephrase the sentence. Is that what the rules of grammar are for?
But the myth is so deeply entrenched that many people steer clear just to avoid being thought of as ignorant of the alleged rule. And maybe they have a point. But …
The myth of a geocentric universe
To conclude, spare a thought for Galileo. He was forced to deny that the sun was at the centre of our planetary system and spent his last few years under house arrest, courtesy of the Inquisition.
As it turned out, the geocentric view with the earth at the centre of the universe was, … a myth.
Ted Page Director PWS
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