January 2026

When I was a child there was an anthropomorphic TV commercial featuring chimpanzees as hapless workmen. Whenever anything went wrong, which it always did, everything was put right by having a cup of tea. These commercials made PG Tips the biggest tea brand in the UK.

I was randomly thinking about this throwback to the 1970s when it occurred to me that these commercials were the absolute manifestation of a positive collision between the creative arts and science.

We are currently living in an age where everyone bows at the altar of science and technology to the exclusion of the humanities and the creative world. We tremble at the prospect that AI will take every job and through human ingenuity we have rather brilliantly made ourselves redundant.

The greatest scientific discovery of the 19^th Century would not have been possible without the creative arts.

If Josiah Wedgwood had not been Charles Darwin’s grandfather, there would have been no Theory of Evolution.

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) made a huge fortune from pottery, inventing and developing new products such as green glaze, creamware, black basalt and jasperware. Wedgwood also invented modern marketing – he pioneered direct mail, money back guarantees, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free and illustrated catalogues.

It was this vast fortune that gave Darwin the financial wherewithal to be able to travel on HMS Beagle to pursue scientific studies and be the gentleman companion to the Captain, Robert Fitzroy.

The previous Captain of HMS Beagle had gone mad and shot himself, so Fitzroy was keen to have a companion to alleviate the stresses of command. He wanted someone to have dinner with every evening to discuss scientific matters. Their mutual friend, Francis Beaufort, proposed Charles Darwin who Fitzroy accepted as his travelling companion for the five-year voyage.

Darwin’s On The Origin of Species and the ultimate global acceptance of the theory of evolution as scientific fact were the outstanding achievements from the second voyage of HMS Beagle (1831-36).

But when you scratch the surface a little you discover that Robert Fitzroy invented meteorology and weather forecasting (Fitzroy still features on the shipping forecast) and Francis Beaufort invented the Beaufort Scale the scale that is still used today to measure wind speed.

These are three of the most significant scientific figures of the 19^th Century. Evidently, Darwin towers above them all but he would almost certainly have ended up as a country vicar without his grandfather’s inheritance.

Fitzroy and Beaufort would almost certainly have made their discoveries without Darwin but how extraordinary it is to think of these three giants of the 19^th Century all involved in one small hydrological surveying expedition.

So, when you are next sitting down with a pot of tea take a moment to think that without that teapot we may still be struggling to understand evolution. To me the thought that such a humble creative object ultimately produced the most significant scientific discovery is exactly as it should be.