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Darwin's Private Papers Get Released To The Internet
bibekpaudel writes "ScienceDaily reports that a wealth of papers belonging to Charles Darwin have been published on the internet, some for the first time. Some 20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today to http://darwin-online.org.uk/. The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history, according to organizers from Cambridge University Library 'This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,' said John van Wyhe, director of the project. The collection includes thousands of notes and drafts of his scientific writings, notes from the voyage of the Beagle when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution, and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species."
...that his works would be the ones to survive.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
--Charles Darwin
...when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution...
Maybe it was controversial back then, but it sure as heck isn't now (not in civilised parts of the world, anyway). Should have phrased that "his then-controversial theory" - might have been a less controversial turn of phrase!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
THIS is what the Internet is about. This is why information wants to be free.
Just 100 years ago, maybe less, you would have had to be someone very special to see this much information from one scientist, and most probably have to be vested in whatever answers or information can be gleaned from it.
Now, however, the Internet allows us ALL to enjoy the privilege of reading his works, notes, and seeing his drawings... for free, at will, at home.
If knowledge is power, this is some really powerful stuff. Forget listening to anyone tell you what he said, just look it up in HIS notes. I wonder how many college papers were written about Darwin and the fallout from this information to date? Wonder what future papers will look like?
The Internet, for all its down sides, is a great thing....
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Using Darwin's theory to attack evolutionary theory is rather like using Newtonian physics to attack General Relativity. Like physics, biology has grown substantially since both men's time.
Darwin did get some things run. Most obvious was the means of heredity. He was not aware of Mendel's work. In fact, Mendelian genetics pretty much eclipsed Darwinian selection early in the 20th century. That, not Natural Selection, was the origin of a lot of the Social Darwinist/Eugenics movements; the application of barnyard selective breeding to humans, something that's quite opposed to Darwin's fundamental point that species could become better adapted to their environments naturally, whereas eugenics/social darwinism was more in the mode that a species needed active improvement, because the natural state was towards degradation.
That's why Expelled and all those nuts out there trying to associate Darwin's theory with the eugenics movement and with Nazi race theory are completely off base. Darwin's theory is in opposition the very idea that a population's reproduction needs to be rigorously managed (as a farmer would do) for a "better" (which, in Darwinian selection, is always a relative, statistical view, and not an absolute one as it was with the eugenics proponents) species.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That sound you just heard was the collective orgasms of the entire RichardDawkins.net forum membership.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today... The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history...
Wow, quite a feat. Must have taken some really intelligent design to put all that together and make it work.
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