Posted on: February 14, 2009
Charles Darwin. 1880
Much has been made recently of the fact that Lincoln and Darwin share a birthday. Two hundred years ago, this past Thursday. A new book talks about another thing they share. Their hatred of slavery. It sounds like a great read. Here’s a short excerpt:
Darwin’s Sacred Cause
How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution
By Adrian Desmond & James Moore
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 448 pp. $30
Feb. 15, 2008
Introduction
Unshackling Creation
Global brands don’t come much bigger than Charles Darwin. He is the grizzled grandfather peering from book jackets and billboards, from textbooks and TV — the sage on greeting cards, postage stamps and commemorative coins. Darwin’s head on British £10 notes radiates imperturbability, mocking those who would doubt his science.
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Posted on: February 13, 2009
Charles Darwin. 1868. Photo by Julia Margaret Cameron.
Just a tad late on this one. Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago, on February 12th. His revolutionary work lives on, despite opposition by the sadly misinformed, to put it gently.
A great link to the study of evolution is here. I think it is incumbent upon anyone who criticizes the theory to actually understand it first, and not to create endless strawmen to knock down. We only hurt ourselves and our own future when we refuse to confront its implications. Building from the foundation of this theory, we have the potential to advance many divergent tributaries of science, and perhaps unlock essential keys in the battle to fight a multitude of diseases. Dismissing the theory, running from it, hiding behind religious belief, we are far more likely to stay in a new Dark Age.…
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Posted on: October 17, 2008
A Children’s Idyll, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. 1900
Spurred on by a thought-provoking blog post by my good friend Tim Brownson, I thought again about what we lose when we grow up. The way we once looked at life. With fresh hope. With a ton of hope and delight. With great expectations and daily excitement. What is it, exactly, about the process of maturation that seems to take so much of that out of us? Is this chemical, biological, spiritual, or all of the above? Do we actually lose special brain cells that are informed with a sense of hope and awe and wonder? Is this an evolutionary process that even makes sense?
I sometimes wonder if we have this backwards. As in, shouldn’t we be more cautious as children and more blown away by the world as adults?…
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