Expert advice of yore makes you wonder about current ‘certainties’

October 3, 2026 — 5:30am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

I came across a letter the other day, written by Charles Darwin during his trip to Australia. Sorry, that sounds like I found the letter in my desk drawer, rather than the more conventional place to find such a letter, which is halfway through the Oxford Book of Australian Letters. All the same, the letter excited me.

Here was one of the world’s greatest naturalists, on the verge of formulating his theory of evolution, and he’s describing how he and a friend “went with a gun in search of the Platypi and actually killed one”. Killing the platypus was a delightful experience: “I consider it a great feat, to be at the death of so wonderful an animal.” We are all a product of our time, I suppose, but here is Darwin, famous for upending humanity’s certainties, and he was still imprisoned by the conventional attitudes of his time. Killing animals was fun.

In every period, most people cling to the common attitudes of the age. I’ve spent the past year or two researching the history of Australian parenting for a new book, out this week. In each period, nearly every “expert” marched to the same drum. They shamelessly copied each other’s ideas. They used the same phrases. The beliefs of each age become certainties by being endlessly repeated, usually on the basis of nothing at all.

And then, very occasionally, there was a person........

© Brisbane Times