Image Credit: an e-card image at www.darwinday.org
Wikipedia gives a summary of the book’s changing influence over the decades:
The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T.H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the “eclipse of Darwinism” from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to modern evolutionary theory, now the unifying concept of the life sciences.
A theory which many had thought was overblown and outdated 100 years ago came to receive a proper appreciation of its relevance and accuracy when new discoveries in genetics supported it, and kept on providing more and more supporting data by showing how natural selection actually worked.
Congratulations, Charles Darwin, on your diligent observation, open-minded analysis and perspicacious insight. It’s not only scientists who can learn something from your example.
A great science radio show I’ve recently discovered is Radiolab from USA public radio station WNYC, where presenters Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich take a concept and examine it from as many different scientific, philosophical and cultural perspectives as they can.
RN’s The Science Show broadcast their episode on “Falling” on Saturday, and it made for fascinating listening.
The full hour’s program podcast is available at the ABC Radio National website (transcript expected by Monday). Radiolab’s own website has podcasts of various chunks of the episode rather than the whole thing (no transcripts that I could see).
P.S. RadioLab has a perfect Darwin-themed episode, too – “The Good Show”:
a belated happy Darwin day Tigtog and all.
I first learnt about Darwin when I was a wee one at five. Mum had a book by Time Life called “Evolution”. I scoured that book from front to back, asking my Mum to explain the bits I couldn’t read. The idea of evolution was so fascinating to me, and remains so to this day. I was so excited about what I read, I wanted to be a scientist. Unfortunately my little self didn’t know about the maths component, which would be my undoing in the end. :-P Oh well, I’m happy as an artist and musician!
Darwin, Happy Birthday, you awesome dude!