Celebrate DARWIN DAY!
February 12, 2002 
An international celebration of science and humanity.

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
written in 1859 by Charles Darwin has been called,
"The most unfairly misjudged book in history."

     I started reading this book expecting to find offensive, disrespectful, and vicious material throughout it. What I came to realize instead, was that people have criticized this book based on offensive, disrespectful and vicious accusations. I can't identify how people have linked this work to God and blasphemy. It has nothing to do with religion, faith, or creation.

     This is a work of observation, logic, and adaptability. It makes perfect sense, and trust me, it is in no way offensive.  To think that for a century people have been debating, fighting, and cursing Charles Darwin over this work seems comical once you read his book. The book is written in easy to understand common language, allowing the not so biologically or anthropologically astute to understand it as well. Even if you are not convinced by Darwin's observations, you will be convinced that there is no threat to anyone's beliefs from this book. 
 I found this work to be very convincing and highly compatible with my faith in God. It does not threaten God, and it certainly does not require me to abandon any beliefs even though I fully understand and agree with Mr. Darwin. 

Read this book, it is worthy of consideration and it is only fair to hold judgment until after you have read it. 
 - written by an anonymous reviewer at Amazon.com (10/1/98) 


Darwin's The Origin of the Species is on line at:  www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species
Charles Darwin
        (b. February 12, 1809)

"Probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed. There is grandeur in this view of life that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and  are being evolved." 
-- Charles Darwin  The Origin of Species
     Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the son of Robert Waring Darwin and his wife Susannah, the grandson of the scientist Erasmus Darwin and of the potter Josiah Wedgwood. His mother died when he was eight years old and he was brought up by his sister. He was taught classics at Shrewsbury, then sent to Edinburgh to study medicine, which he hated, and a final attempt at educating him was made by sending him to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study theology (1827). During that period he loved to collect plants, insects, and geological specimens, guided by his cousin William Darwin Fox, an entomologist. His scientific inclinations were encouraged by his botany professor, John Stevens Henslow, who was instrumental, despite heavy paternal opposition, in securing a place for Darwin as a naturalist on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to Patagonia (1831-1836).

     Under Captain Robert Fitzroy he visited Tenerife, the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, Montevideo, Tierra del Fuego, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Chile, the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and Tasmania. In the Keeling Islands he devised his theory of coral reefs. During this five-year expedition he obtained intimate knowledge of the fauna, flora and the geology of many lands, which equipped him for his later investigations. By 1846 he had published several works on the geological and zoological discoveries of his voyage -- works that placed him at once in the front rank of scientists. He developed a friendship with Sir Charles Lyell, became secretary of the Geological Society (1838-1841) and in 1839 married his cousin Emma Wedgewood (1808-1896).
 
     From 1842 he lived at Down House, Downe, Kent, a country gentleman among his gardens, conservatories, pigeons and fowls. The practical knowledge he gained there, especially in variation and interbreeding, proved invaluable. Private means enabled him to devote himself to science, in spite of continuous ill-health: it was not realised until after his death that he had suffered from Chagas' disease, which he had contracted from an insect bite while in South America.
 
     At Down House he addressed himself to the great work of his life -- the problem of the origin of species.  After five years of collecting the evidence he began to speculate on the subject.   In 1842, he drew  up his observations in some short notes, expanded in 1844 into a sketch of conclusions for his own use. These embodied the principle of natural selection, the germ of the Darwinian Theory, but with typical caution he delayed publication of his hypothesis. 

    However, in 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a memoir of the Malay Archipelago, which, to Darwin's surprise, contained in essence the main ideas of his own theory of natural selection. Lyell and Joseph Hooker persuaded him to submit a paper of his own, based on his 1844 sketch, which was read simultaneously with Wallace's before the Linnean Society in 1858. Neither Darwin nor Wallace was present on that historic occasion.

    Darwin then set to work to condense his vast mass of notes and put into shape his great work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859. This epoch-making work, received throughout Europe with the deepest interest, was violently attacked because it did not agree with the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis. But eventually it succeeded in obtaining recognition from almost all biologists.
Sunday, February 17, 2002
on PBS' American Experience:
"Monkey Trial"
In 1925, John Scopes is 
arrested in Tennessee for 
teaching evolution in defiance 
of state law.  His trial becomes 
an all-out duel between 
science and religion
 

Tuesday, February 26, 2002
on PBS' NOVA:
"The Missing Link"
Paleontologists hoping to solve 
the mystery of the first creature 
to crawl from water onto land -- 
a vital bridge between fish and 
land-animal -- turn up clues 
from Pennsylvania to Greenland

     Darwin continued to work at a series of supplemental treatises: The Fertilization of Orchids (1862), The Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (1867), and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), which postulated that the human race was derived from a hairy animal belonging to the great anthropoid group and was related to the progenitors of the orangutan, chimpanzee and gorilla. In his 1871 work he also developed his important supplementary theory of sexual selection.

     Later works include The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Insectivorous Plants (1875), The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876), Different Forms of Flowers in Plants of the Same Species (1877), and The Formations of Vegetable Mold through the Action of Worms (1881). 

    Darwin died after a long illness, leaving eight children, several of whom achieved great distinction. Though not the sole originator of the evolution hypothesis, nor even the first to apply the concept of descent to plants and animals, he was the first thinker to gain for that theory a wide acceptance among biological experts. By adding to the crude evolutionism of Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck and others, his own specific idea of natural selection, Darwin supplied a sufficient cause, which raised it from a hypothesis to a verifiable theory. 
From:  http://www.onthenet.com.au/~stear/charles_darwin.htm
Visit Friends of Charles Darwin at: 
http://www.gruts.demon.co.uk/darwin/ 

& The Official Darwin Day Website at: 
http://www.darwin.ws/day/
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