I was toying with a few different posts today, but figured that since today we celebrate Charles Darwin's 203rd birthday, why not blog on Darwin, who is probably better known and more vilified than any scientist who has ever lived. His seminal book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (yes, that's the
complete title) is considered by some the greatest scientific treatise ever written; others consider it the work of Satan himself.
Digression: here are some free downloads of books related to evolution from the National Academies. Good only for 12 February!
What I know about evolution could be fit into a thimble. As an undergraduate I was exposed to it
through courses in paleontology and historical geology taught by Dr. Gerald H. Johnson at the Department of Geology at the College of William and Mary, one of the best teachers I have ever had. How many people could get 20-year-olds excited about clams that had been dead for 4 million years?
Later, in the early 1990s at the University of New Mexico I taught a freshman-level course in historical geology, a subject that involves evolution (and more than the evolution of clams). Through this course I developed a much greater appreciation of evolution.
So what about more of a discussion of Darwin and evoution? For that, I will direct you to the blog (and book, as well), Why Evolution Is True, owned by another W&M graduate (Class of 1971, one year behind me), Dr. Jerry Coyne, who is a a professor at the University of Chicago. Read what Coyne says about Darwin and his book, which he has read countless times (his dog-eared copy is shown above). He's 'da man' when it comes to evolution.
I'll conclude by saying that it's amazing that so many Americans and their national politicians (bless you, Jon Huntsman) reject evolution. I thought this was settled when I was a child, but apparently not. But as this article by Kenneth Miller (thanks to Laura Crossey) suggests (without invoking religion) that it's not a 'Darwin problem', it's a 'science problem'.
And that's not only really sad, but also really inimical to our future.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin
"Darwin matters because evolution matters. Evolution matters because science matters. Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going." - Michael Shermer
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