The Genius of Darwin

Whoa, Charlie Booker’s review of a new documentary on Darwin really makes me want to see it.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it’s been under attack since day one. That’s just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we’d still be debating Newton with idiots too.

I think this might be the documentary he’s talking about, which has already made its way to youtube. Perhaps just as well, since I can’t imagine any television stations in the US clamoring to get it (and that is not a comment on its quality, but entirely about the absurd anti-intellectual propensity of too many Americans).

(Never mind, it seems this is a different documentary on Darwin. Still worth watching, though.)

Jefferson was a freethinker

If you’re listening to Atheists Talk radio right now, you’ve been hearing a lot about the secular intent of the founding of the US government. The LA Times has an article on the Jefferson Bible — that greatly abridged version of the Bible that Jefferson made by chopping out all the miracles and unbelievable stuff, reducing it to a work of New Testament philosophy. The article asks,

“Can you imagine the reaction if word got out that a president of the United States cut out Bible passages with scissors, glued them onto paper and said, ‘I only believe these parts?'”

My reaction would be “Hallelujah!” The Religious Right ought to be experiencing some sever cognitive dissonance, since they both revere the founding fathers to a ridiculous degree and insist that this is a Christian nation…but they avoid it by deluding themselves about the radical nature of some of the founding fathers’ religious belief.

We need a president who can do this:

In Jefferson’s version of the Gospels, for example, Jesus is still wrapped in swaddling clothes after his birth in Bethlehem. But there’s no angel telling shepherds watching their flocks by night that a savior has been born. Jefferson retains Jesus’ crucifixion but ends the text with his burial, not with the resurrection.

Stripping miracles from the story of Jesus was among the ambitious projects of a man with a famously restless mind. At 71, he read Plato’s “Republic” in the original Greek and found it lackluster.

We won’t be getting one in the next election.

Fire the starting gun! The Darwin year begins…NOW!

It was on 1 July 1858, 150 years ago today, that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public in a joint reading of Darwin’s and Wallace’s papers at the Linnean Society of London (an event which they did not recognize as important at the time), which makes today analogous to the Fourth of July for the biology revolution. Celebrate! If you’ve got a some fireworks you were saving for the holiday in a few days time, set off a few early.

The Beagle Project has a summary of the significance of this day in scientific history. If you want an anchor point for the Darwin Year, this is a good candidate — let the science flow forth.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Tunguska event

Except, unfortunately, what the heck it was. The Tunguska event was the mysterious explosion of unidentified origin that occured in a remote area of Siberia on 30 June 1908, flattening trees over 2000 square kilometers, but leaving no trace of a crater. Archy has put together a thorough account of what we know, including some of the speculation about the causes.

I rather liked the idea that it was a curse by the thunder god, Ogdy, mainly because “Ogdy” is such a cute name.

Get ready to party like it’s 1859

Olivia Judson hits exactly the right note in her article about Charles Darwin and the coming centennial year of The Origin: brilliant fellow who revolutionized our thinking, but he wasn’t the only one and he definitely wasn’t the final word on evolution. So let’s party!

This is going to be a great celebratory year for biologists, and I have to confess — I’m also looking forward to the bitter gnashing of teeth by the creationists.

Darwin had difficult handwriting

Find out for yourself. Darwin Online has acquired a huge digital collection of Darwin’s papers, everything from book drafts to personal letters, and has them scanned and available on the web. There they are in all their scribbled, crossed out, penciled over, rewritten glory — historians and antiquarians will drool over these, but me, I prefer the neatly typed versions.

The collection of family photos is pretty darned cool, though.

An historical meme

Wilkins tagged me. It’s all his fault.

This is supposed to be a historical meme…why bother me with this? I think it’s because philosophers have a professional obligation to annoy people with weird questions, and Wilkins takes personal pleasure in poking me now and then, the brute. Here’s what I’m supposed to do.

  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
  3. Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
  4. Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.

Favorite historical figure?? I don’t suppose I can name the progenote or urbilaterian, but because this was started by some historian somewhere, I have to restrict myself to some boring recent human being; and like Wilkins, I should avoid the obvious choices, although in his case Frederick II Hohenstaufen was a cool dude.

I guess I’ll name another cool dude…

[Read more…]

The American Civil War in four minutes

Here’s a cool animation of the progress of the Civil War — it’s like the Confederacy is a giant gelatinous red blob spread over the South, punctuated with explosions as it occasionally makes amoeboid protrusions into the North, only to eventually succumb as it is driven back and chopped into bits.

Sorry, Southerners who read this blog, you may not want to watch. The Yankees will enjoy it, though. Except for the little meter with the casualty counts, which is spinning at a horrendous rate for both sides.