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Interesting Darwin
Compiled & edited by Jahed Ahmed
Published on Darwin Day (February 12, 2006)
Darwin had a plan to enter the ministry prior to his fateful voyage on HMS Beagle in 1831. Among other things, he carried a copy of Bible with him in his voyage. He was 22 at that time.
Darwin’s father, a wealthy country doctor, opposed his trip on Beagle.
Emma, Darwin’s wife & an ardent believer, thought that Darwin’s destination was plainly hell.
Biologists and Scientists don’t use the term “Darwinism” because of the misleading connotations associated with it. Darwinism “is a rhetorical device to make evolution seem like a kind of faith, like ‘Maoism’,” says Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. Thus it’s the anti-evolution groups who make frequent utterances of the term.
“Survival of the fittest” is a phrase that Darwin never used himself. The phrase, although initially coined to characterize the Darwin’s theory, has taken on connotations of social and economic competition that Darwin never intended.
Darwin started writing “The Origin of Species” as early as 1830s but held publishing until 1859, when he decided to publish it after learning that a younger scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, had come up with a similar theory. One of the main reasons behind such a unusual delay in informing the world about his remarkable and splendid discovery was Darwin being afraid that his thoughts on evolution would be akin to “confessing a murder”, as Darwin wrote to a friend.
Darwin was profoundly influenced by Thomas Malthus and his theory that predators, disease and a finite food supply place a limit on populations that would otherwise multiply indefinitely.
In his novel “The Darwin Conspiracy”, best-selling author John Darnton playfully inverts history by portraying Darwin as a schemer who dispatched a rival into a volcano, and stole the ideas that made him famous.
Darwin has replaced Charles Dickens on the British 10-pound note.
In 1996, John Paul II, the chief of the Vatican, proclaims there is no essential conflict between Darwin’s theory and Catholicism.
Although Darwin struggled with questions of faith his whole life, he ultimately described himself as an “Agnostic.”
Less than half of all Americans believe in evolution.
Source: Newsweek, November 28, 2005
Jahed Ahmed writes from New York, USA. He is one of the co-moderators of Mukto-Mona.