Posted on 11/20/2005 4:48:01 PM PST by PatrickHenry
On a December night in 1831, HMS Beagle, on a mission to chart the coast of South America, sailed from Plymouth, England, straight into the 21st century. Onboard was a 22-year-old amateur naturalist, Charles Darwin, the son of a prosperous country doctor, who was recruited for the voyage largely to provide company for the Beagle's aloof and moody captain, Robert FitzRoy.
For the next five years, the little ship — just 90 feet long and eight yards wide — sailed up and down Argentina, through the treacherous Strait of Magellan and into the Pacific, before returning home by way of Australia and Cape Town. Toward the end of the voyage, the Beagle spent five weeks at the remote archipelago of the Galapagos, home to giant tortoises, black lizards and a notable array of finches.
Here Darwin began to formulate some of the ideas about evolution that would appear, a quarter-century later, in "The Origin of Species," which from the day it was written to the present has been among the most influential books ever published.
Of the revolutionary thinkers who have done the most to shape the intellectual history of the past century, two — Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx — are in eclipse today, and one — Albert Einstein — has been accepted into the canon of modern thought, even if most people still don't understand what he was thinking. Darwin alone remains unassimilated, provocative, even threatening to some — like Pat Robertson, who recently warned the citizenry of Dover, Pa., that they risked divine wrath for siding with Darwin in a dispute over high-school biology textbooks (click here for related story). Could God still be mad after all this time?
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
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Thanks for the post.
Dang, tried to get in before the ping.
You're in early enough.
Why do they keep insisting on lumping in Freud and Marx with Darwin, when neither of them are worthy of shining Chuckie's shoes?
In part, the fascination with the man is being driven by his enemies, who say they're fighting "Darwinism," rather than evolution or natural selection. "It's a rhetorical device to make evolution seem like a kind of faith, like 'Maoism'," says Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, editor of one of the two Darwin anthologies just published. (James D. Watson, codiscoverer of DNA, edited the other, but both include the identical four books.) "Scientists," Wilson adds, "don't call it 'Darwinism'."
Yeah, and it hasn't been proven that Chuckie was an atheist like Freud and Marx.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Darwin is perceived as having caused Britian to abandon Christianity. That is why he is controversial. Some see his ideas as inimical to faith.
Err, um, what type company was this young man expected to provide?
That is a question more appropriate to this era, than the Victorian one. :)
We hit the MSM bigtime PH.
Considering they both pointed to Darwin as influential in shaping their thinking, I think is quite appropriate!
"Err, um, what type company was this young man expected to provide?"
Intellectual. As the captain of the ship, it was considered improper for Fitzroy to mingle with the common crew. It was the usual practice to bring along a man of some rank in society to keep the Captain from going bonkers on the long voyage. Darwin's family was well respected, and he was educated.
Not really. In actual practice, Freudian theory is very useful.
Ship's captains at the time were not to socialize with the crew who were all commoners. Darwin was of Fitzroy's status and his purpose on the Beagle was to be a social companion, sharing meals and conversations and this was a common practice on long sailing voyages. The two did not get along because of their opposing political ideas and because Darwin argued against Fitzroy's belief in the inherent righteousness of slavery.
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