It's a little late, but to all a happy and adaptive Darwin Day! Woohoo.

*Gets out necromancy handbook*

 

Happy 200th birthday, Darwin.

Indeed!

 

It's nice to see you, CDarwin. Hopefully you'll stick around for a bit, and not just leave when your Darwin Day libations run dry.

There were a number of good documentaries on the BBC leading up to the anniversary...I believe YT posted a link to 'Darwin and the Tree of Life.'

A particularly good documentary was 'Darwin's struggle', which while being a retrospect on his life in general, picked out several flaws in the public perception of his work. For example, his time on the Galapagos is hugely overstated, and was just a small part of a very long process towards his theory. The true eureka moment, or the piece of the puzzle that convinced him of the adaptation process, was when he read the work of Malthus, on population dynamics. Perhaps most of you already knew this, but when I studied evolution, it was his time in the Galapagos, that took precedent.

In any case, Happy Darwin Day \o/

 

EDIT: Unfortunately, 'Darwin's struggle' is no longer available on the BBC website.

Edited February 12, 200916 yr by Snail

In America we celebrate Darwin's birthday every year (just most call it Abraham Lincoln's birthday:D). Lincoln and Darwin were born the same day. Happy 200th to both.

Why no Empedocles day, or Wells day, or Mathew day, or Wallace day?

Guess Darwin diserves to be remembered more then the ones above.

Guess Darwin diserves to be remembered more then the ones above.

 

And why do you think that? Is popularization of an idea more important than the idea itself?

And why do you think that? Is popularization of an idea more important than the idea itself?

 

If an idea becomes "popular" there are certainly good reasons that support the idea itself. However, I was not criticizing, just making some fun of your reply

The importance of popularization and the importance of the idea are not mutually exclusive, and often serve each other symbiotically.

Guess Darwin diserves to be remembered more then the ones above.

 

He's the patron saint of Atheists

Why no Empedocles day, or Wells day, or Mathew day, or Wallace day?

 

Well, there is (arguably) a Wallace day...http://wallacefund.info/2008-events

 

It's just one of those silly matters of circumstance, that one person gets all the fame outside of scientific circles. I'm positive more people have heard of Newton than Leibniz. Probably not the best comparison, as Newton is famous for more than calculus, but the principle's there.

Edited February 13, 200916 yr by Snail

A Gallup poll released the day before Darwin's 200th said 39% of Americans believed in evolution, 25% did not, with 36% apparently too uninformed to have an opinion.

A Gallup poll released the day before Darwin's 200th said 39% of Americans believed in evolution, 25% did not, with 36% apparently too uninformed to have an opinion.

 

In your opinion, which is worse? Having a wrong opinion, or having no opinion at all?

Why no Empedocles day, or Wells day, or Mathew day, or Wallace day?

 

Well, I would obviously defend Darwin as more than a popularizer. He was a masterful synthesizer who took disparate arguments and lines of evidence from practically the breadth of natural science of his day and forged them into a single, coherent argument, better than anyone else had before (and better than Wallace did as his contemporary). He was also a model scientist and, generally, nice guy.

 

That said, the real reason we have a Darwin Day is obviously politics. Empodocles, Wells, and Matthew didn't come up with anything that's still politically controversial. Darwin Day events mostly started up during times in which evolution was under some sort of political attack to serve as public education. The University of Tennessee's, for example, one of the oldest in the country, was started while there was an equal time bill poised in the state legislature.

 

Oh, by the way, I posted this thread last year, if no one noticed the date, as I see Mr. Skeptic did.

In your opinion, which is worse? Having a wrong opinion, or having no opinion at all?

 

It depends on how much I claim to know about the subject. The more I know about a subject, the stronger my opinion and the worse it is to be wrong. If I know anything about something it is hard for me not to have some kind of opinion about it. It just seems to this science nerd that evolution is such a basic part of science that in order to have no opinion, you would need to know almost nothing about science.

Oh, by the way, I posted this thread last year, if no one noticed the date, as I see Mr. Skeptic did.

 

Hello, my name is iNow and I'm an idiot.

Happy Birthday Darwin!!

 

I had the privellege of going to an open lecture by Steve Jones yesterday as part of the Darwin 200 series. It was brilliant, he was a very entertaining speaker and a very intelligent man!

 

And me and my anthropology-geek pals are celebrating Darwin's big 200 in style on the 12th march by having a "Darwin's Birthday Beard Bar Crawl Fancy Dress Extravaganza!".

 

We are so cool

 

Hope everyone else is having fun celebrating the genius and his work this year!

 

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