TW: Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago today. To mark the occasion I pulled some quotes out of Economist's piece that recognized the occasion. I do so as evolution is one of those about which we all (I hope) learned about in school years or decades ago but likely do not really recall many details. When it is on our minds it is likely within the context of someone hawking some form of creationism. There are really two primary groups of nations which have a serious problem with Darwin, countries where Islam predominates and the U.S. of A. The Economist managed to get through their entire piece without mentioning creationism, no doubt on purpose and a flick of the nose to those who feel obligated to report the unsubstantiated in the pursuit of balance.
From the Economist:
"...Since the beginning of time, people who have thought about such things have seen these marvels as examples of the wisdom of God; even as evidence for his existence. But 200 years ago, on February 12th 1809, a man was born who would challenge all that. The book that issued the challenge, published half a century later, in 1859, offered a radical new view of the living world and, most radical of all, of humanity’s origins. The man was Charles Robert Darwin. The book was “On the Origin of Species”. And the challenge was the theory of evolution by natural selection.
...of all the discoveries of 19th- and early 20th-century science—invisible atoms, infinite space, the inconstancy of time and the mutability of matter—only evolution has failed to find general acceptance outside the scientific world. Few laymen would claim they did not believe Einstein. Yet many seem proud not to believe Darwin.
...The idea of evolution by natural selection is not hard to grasp. It just requires connecting some uncontentious propositions. These are that organisms vary from one another, even within a species, and that new variation can arise from time to time; that some of this variation is passed from parent to offspring; and that more individuals are born than can exist in the available space (or be sustained by the available resources). The consequence is what Darwin described in his book as a “struggle for existence”. The weakest are eliminated in this struggle. The fit survive. The survivors pass on their traits to their offspring. Over enough time, this differential transmission of characters will lead to the formation of a new species.
...Darwin’s theory explained why species were so well adapted to their environment and how new species would form. It suggested that all living things were related, from the beetle to the lotus, and that everything descended ultimately from a single common ancestor. Evolution thus removed the need for divine explanations of diversity and, along with evidence emerging at that time of the extreme age of the Earth, it further suggested that the wider universe might also owe nothing to divine intervention and everything to natural laws. Darwin understood all of this and was greatly troubled."
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