Nature &Science Entropy | 06 Jan 2009
The year of Darwin
The year 2009 is the bicentennial of Darwin’s birthday, and sesquicentennial of publication of his seminal book in Nov -1859 “The Origin of Species“… ( The Origin with a literal rendition of Genesis )
Darwin Illustration in Nature News
Source: Nature News
The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin falls on 12 February 2009. Darwin was arguably the most influential scientist of modern times. No researcher has since matched his collective impact on the natural and social sciences; on politics, religions, and philosophy; on art and cultural relations, and in ways that the man himself would never have imagined.
This issue of Nature news special provide updated news, research and analysis on Darwin’s life, his science and his legacy, as well as news from the Darwin 200 consortium of organizations celebrating this landmark event.
“Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 bc,” the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote in 1973. “It is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.”
The essay of Dobzhansky’s bears the now-famous title “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. That is so close to being an analytical truth — a necessary implication of what life itself is — that we can be certain it will continue to be true into the future. But that certainty in no way limits the diversity and sheer wonder of what we will find on the voyage that Darwin began.
I reflect with an eloquent quote by Richard Dawkins
“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”
- Richard Dawkins
Pl refer this link to explore Darwin 200.
on 11 Feb 2009 at 9:09 am 1.A life in poems | Entropy... said …
[...] to my previous post The year of Darwin to explore [...]
on 23 Feb 2009 at 12:29 pm 2.michele said …
beautiful quote from Dawkins—worthy of Darwin…
i’ve been with Darwin in the past couple of days while listening to Melvin Bragg’s podcasts about the great Man http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/darwin/inourtime.shtml
His voyage on the Beagle reminded me of the film “Master and Commander” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_and_Commander_(movie) where Paul Bettany plays a “quasi-Darwin”‘s role.
Darwin’s list of pros and cons of marriage is very funny:
Marry
Children (if it Please God)
Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
Home, & someone to take care of house
Charms of music and female chit-chat
These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London
Not Marry
Freedom to go where one liked
Choice of Society and little of it
Conversation of clever men at clubs
Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
Expense and anxiety of children
Perhaps quarrelling
Loss of Time
Cannot read in the evenings
Fatness and idleness
Anxiety and responsibility
Less money for books etc.
If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into indolent, idle fool
Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.