Tag Archives: Alfred Russell Wallace

darwin: hooker, line, and sink or swim

…Darwin’s own account suggests that in part he owed the inspiration for his theory to reading T.R. Malthus’s Essay on Population which was written in 1798, though the dates in Darwin’s journal throw some doubt on this. Malthus’s essay purports … Continue reading

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darwin: build them and they will run

The man with the biggest club has all the fun… …As a book, The Origin of Species gains enormously from the range of interests that a natural scientist could still, in the mid-nineteenth century, allow himself. It is a work … Continue reading

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darwin: if only one could discern it

…Darwin had been struck during the voyage by a number of facts which seemed at odds with the special creation of each species. The organic life he studied so intensively and collected so assiduously seemed littered with clues, odd similarities, … Continue reading

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darwin:blind chance of divine mutation

…The theory of evolution in biology was already an old, even a discredited, one. Darwin, in his preface to The Origin of Species, listed more than thirty precursors- and was accused, in spite of this, of serious omissions. Greek thinkers … Continue reading

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darwin: pinning the tail on the honkey

…It was the unscientific character of early evolutionary theory that made scientists like Lyell and Huxley, and Darwin himself, skeptical. All the same, their predecessors made some telling points. There were the improvements made in some domesticated animals and plant … Continue reading

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darwin: insufferable biding of time

…The voyage of the Beagle was, as he said himself, the formative experience of Darwin’s life. He lived hard, working in the cramped conditions of a sailing ship, rounding Cape Horn and making expeditions hundreds of miles inland through dangerous … Continue reading

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darwin: going rogue on rational

…The clergyman had probably been educated, as Darwin himself had been, in that school of Christian apologetics known as “Rational Christianity,” of which the work of Darwin’s neighbor in death and fame, Isaac Newton, had been the chief inspiration. Rational … Continue reading

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darwin: doubting the fixity of species

…The folklore of scientific invention and discovery has left no striking tale of the revelation to Darwin of the clue of the origin of species, like Newton’s apple, Stephenson’s kettle lid, or Galileo dropping weights from the leaning tower of … Continue reading

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darwin: dispensing with adam

…Darwin took with him on his voyage, besides his own knowledge and aptitudes, one indispensable tool for interpreting what he saw. Before sailing, Henslow pressed upon him the recently published first volume of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology., with instructions … Continue reading

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consequences: scrambling with the brutes

…To some the implications of Darwin’s theory were negative and desolating. The whole earth no longer proclaimed the glory of the Lord. Paradoxically, in revealing the closeness of man’s link with the rest of creation, Darwin seemed to have cut … Continue reading

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