darwin
gregladen | February 11, 2014Charles Darwin was born on Febrary 12th, 1809, and lived until 1882. He was a geologist who significantly advanced our understanding of how coral reefs form. He contributed to the study of archaeology through his study of soil formation processes. Darwin made many contributions to the collections of natural materials including insects and birds to major British museums and institutions of study. He was an experienced traveller, and reported on the ethnography of peoples around the world, especially in South America. He played an important role as keeper of the clocks on a major British…
esiegel | October 2, 2013"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -Charles Darwin
There are problems with science today, no doubt. With all the knowledge we've accumulated about the Universe, from the smallest subatomic scales to the farthest recesses of deep space, there are still realms and regimes where our best theories fail, where the predictions and the data don't match, and where no known explanation is sufficient for the phenomena that shows up…
dr. dolittle | May 1, 2013 Alfred Russel Wallace. Image from: NPR, Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
Darwin is the more famous of the two when it comes to thinking about who came up with the theory of evolution. However, a man named Alfred Russel Wallace co-discovered the theory.
Alfred Wallace died 100 years ago. In honor of his contribution to the theory of evolution, NPR ran a wonderful story about him and his discoveries the other day. Just in case you did not get a chance to hear it, you can either read the transcript or listen to the story here.
gregladen | February 13, 2013The The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin was published over 150 years go. At the time, several different alternative theories of the origin and history of life were being discussed in the West. Some of these theories were theological. Theological ideas included a literal translation of the bible, with the flora, the fauna, and humans created in three separate but related creation events on a freshly made earth just a few thousand years ago. Another theological idea had an Abrahamic God's hand involved in the history of life but in ways we were not likely to understand until after death…
gregladen | February 12, 2013Happy Birthday Charles Darwin!
Oh, and Abe Lincoln too.
For Darwin's birthday, I want to discuss the uses of the terms "Darwinism, Darwinian, and Darwinist." Many have written about this and many don't like any of those words, some seem to equally dislike all three. A couple of years back, writing for the New York Times, Carl Safina said,
Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution. Such as: Gregor Mendel’s patterns of heredity (which gave Darwin’s idea of natural selection a mechanism — genetics —…
gregladen | February 11, 2013Everyone knows that Darwin was a biologist, and in many ways he was the first prominent modern biologist. Though Darwin scholars know this, many people do not realize that he was also a geologist. Really, he was mainly a geologist on the day he stepped foot on The Beagle for his famous five year tour. This is especially true if we count his work on coral reefs as a geological study, even though coral reefs are a biological phenomenon. After all, the standing model for coral reef formation at the time came from the field of Geology.
To exemplify this, I've put together a list of several…
gregladen | September 30, 2012Have you read The Autobiography of Charles Darwin? Do you read, er, listen to audiobooks? If so, did you know about this one?
Read by Greg Wagland:
This work, unsurprisingly, offers invaluable insights into the life and times of Charles Darwin, his personality and the formative influences that made him what he was, for here we have his own words and 'voice' at the close of a prodigiously productive career. He tells of his childhood, his student days at Edinburgh and Cambridge, his love of beetles, shooting and geology and of his grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood. He talks at some length about his…
gregladen | June 5, 2012A talk by Genie Scott of the NCSE:
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Photo of Darwin Statute by KevinZim
gregladen | February 14, 2012We know that Darwin was a biologist, and in many ways he was the first prominent modern biologist. But many people do not realize that he was also a geologist. Really, he was mainly a geologist on the day he stepped foot on The Beagle for his famous five year tour. This is especially true if we count his work on coral reefs as a geological study, even though coral reefs are a biological phenomenon. After all, the standing model for coral reef formation at the time came from the field of Geology.
Here is a list of several of Darwin's first publications with their publication dates:
1839…
gregladen | June 2, 2011There are many fascinating stories linked to the early days of evolutionary biology and geology, and more than one of them is intertwined with our understanding of coral reefs. I had always thought that Darwin's interaction with the question of how coral reefs form was central to Darwin's own formation as a scientist, in part because of Charles Lyell. Lyell was the Big Kahuna of geology and earth science of the day, and had more or less established the standing theory of how coral reefs formed. Darwin, on observing reefs "in the wild" very quickly realized that Lyell was mostly wrong, and…
gregladen | May 31, 2011Welcome to the Thirty Sixth Carnival of Evolution. The world of blog carnivals is in a state of flux and uncertainty these days, with the distinct possibility of a mass extinction just around the corner. One of the oldest, longest running, and most important carnivals, I and the Bird, issued its last issue only a few days ago, and the Keepers of the Carnival of Evolution themselves are said to be thinking about ways that this whole carnival thing can be made to work better. That could, I suppose, mean killing it and replacing it with something else. We are hopeful that this will not be…
gregladen | March 30, 2011For that special organization or person that makes you throw up a little in your mouth when you hear about their latest aggravating attack on our children's education, by way of making fun of something that is not really all that funny, DontDissDarwn Central annually awards the highly alliterated angs-ridden accolade: The Upchucky. And this year's award is bestowed, nay, foisted on Answers in Genesis, for their latest dumb-ass venture, the Noah's Ark Park.
"rooted in outright opposition to science...[this] hostility to science, knowledge and education does little to attract the kind of…
gregladen | February 12, 2011And, for your birthday I'm going to repost my epic (as in long) series on Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle. And, to save electrons, each of the following (see above, because this is the blogosphere where everything is upside-down) will be a pointer to the original post. Enjoy!
gregladen | December 2, 2010In his highly readable book, One Long Argument, Ernst Mayr breaks down the body of thought often referred to as "Darwin's Theory" into five separate and distinct theories, the second of which being "common descent." Darwin's second evolutionary theory (second by Mayr's count, not Darwin's) is really a hypothesis that could be worded this way:
All life on earth descended from a single, original, primordial form that arose eons ago.
The evidence in favor of this hypothesis is strong, but the test of the hypothesis ... the means of disproving it, which is, after all, the point of stating it to…
cagapakis | September 4, 2010
Life transforms environments, creating ecosystems where there was once only rocks. The evolution of photosynthetic bacteria billions of years ago created the atmosphere we have today, paving the way for the evolution of larger, oxygen-breathing organisms. We humans obviously transform our environment in countless ways, but can we also engineer barren environments to be hospitable to life? Can we create new living, self-sustaining ecosystems in hostile places? Can we turn lifeless planets into second Earths through the clever introduction of life forms?
Terraforming is the (currently…
gregladen | August 16, 2010Therefore, we should teach that as fact in schools, right?
I think this might be old. But still relevant.
cagapakis | May 31, 2010I love this quote from the XKCD blog:
The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I've ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I've spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.
Many scientists try very hard to de-emphasize this complexity, trying to reduce "human nature" down to parts and genes and behaviors that can be explained by evolutionary mechanisms, by hormones, by genetics. It's not nature vs. nurture and it's not just male and female, it's nature and nurture and infinite variations along a culturally and biologically mediated gender continuum. By…
laelaps | March 31, 2010
A grey mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus). Image from Wikipedia.
Charles Darwin's visit to the Galapagos Archipelago has been celebrated time and again for its influence on his evolutionary thoughts, but I have to wonder what would have happened if the Beagle skipped the Galapagos and visited Madagascar instead. What would Darwin have made of the animals which had been evolving in splendid isolation on the African island? Would "Darwin's lemurs", rather than Darwin's finches, be among the most recognizable icons of evolution?
Answers to such questions are beyond our grasp, but the diverse…
gregladen | March 13, 2010Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:
Write a letter to Charles Darwin explaining why you believe biblical creationism is more plausible and reasonable than Darwin's theory of evolution.
Aubrea's essay is here in PDF form. The web site with other essays, the rules of the contest, and additional information is here.
I invite you to review this essay and comment on its veracity and validity.
Hat tip: Scott Lohman
cevans | February 25, 2010
The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds is an experiment in scale: by condensing 4.6 billion years of history into a minute, the video serves as a self-contained timepiece. Like a specialized clock, it gives a sense of perspective. Every eventâ--âfrom the formation of the Earth, to the Cambrian Explosion, to the evolution of mice and squirrelsâ--âis proportionate to every other, displaying humankind as a blip, almost indiscernible in the layered course of history. This is useful, largely, for the sake of humility.
Each event in the Evolution of Life fades gradually over the course of the minute…