Darwin Day

 Today is the 213th anniversary of the man who changed the way we think about our. world and our place in it. He was not the first to study evolution, but his flash of insight, which showed that the process was caused by natural selection, backed up by the evidence assembled in The Origin of Species (1859) was so obvious when stated that the scientific world was fast to accept it.


Before 1859 humans were believed to be special, unique, but after that date Darwin's idea that all life, including us, originated from a single source took over, although, as we know there are many who refuse to accept, even today.


Just recently a college in the US cancelled Thomas Huxley (Darwin's bulldog) because of some idea that he was racist. He was a Victorian gentleman with Victorian attitudes, but at the same time he was an ardent abolitionist. Darwin was much the same, he had the attitudes of his time but was an abolitionist and a kindly family man. He did believe that the brown people were in some ways inferior to the pinkish ones, but that was a general, if wrong, belief at the time.


The question is: Should Darwin be cancelled?


This Style 10/6











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