[fishtank]

Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802).

Charles in the parlor ... "Yep, ol' grand dad was always writin' and readin' and doin' all kinds of stuff at that ol' desk over there, and there's this big ol' drawer full of all kinds of stuff ---- hey! hot diggity, lookie here at this ol' book' that grand daddy must 'uv written....!!! Maybe I can sell it! Hmmmmm.... Better yet, mebbe I kin put MY name on it and sell MILLIONS of copies.... He he, yeah, that's the ticket."

(fishtank's screen play for the new production: "Liberalism is a Plagiarism Disorder.")

/sarc

Yeah, that's a takeoff on Savage's book, I admit, but I couldn't resist.

[jim_trent]

Using wikipedia as evidence? The text that ANYONE can change.

[null and void]

Anyone with even the slightest familiarity with the decades of extremely diligent and detailed work Charles Darwin did to formally flesh out and elucidate the underpinnings of the theory knows the answer to this question.

OTOH, if your only scientific text starts with “In the beginning God...”

I wouldn’t expect much in the way of reasoned argument, nor openness to the fruits of actual observation.

[12th_Monkey]

was he the Joe Biden of his time?

[MrB]

Just curious...

What are the “falsifying criteria” for this evolution theory?

[sickoflibs]

[StoneWall Brigade]

LoL

[ifinnegan]

This is certainly not unknown or controversial. Everyone knows Wallace and Erasmus were presenting similar ideas.

This is how it is with just about all science, then and now. Nothing comes out of a vacuum which few exceptions of true genius, such as Mendel’s studies on genetic inheritance.

Darwin’s work shouldn’t be belittled because it was not wholly original with him. It was influential and he put the work in.

Yet, the contemporary phenomenon of his being raised up to iconic, Demi-god status (that people even in this thread seem to hold to) is bizarre and not benign, nor meant to be benign.

[Oliviaforever]

Here we have more proof that Darwin’ s theory of evolution was not only false but corrupt.

Thanks for posting the real facts.

[angryoldfatman]

Voltaire expressed the fundamentals of Darwinism (natural selection) at least 70 years before Charles Darwin was born. And even then, Voltaire was simply elaborating on the philosophy of Epicurus, who of course pre-dates Darwin by millenia.

I can get the English translated quote and source once I get home, but I believe it comes from Voltaire’s Philisophical Dictionary.

[Revolting cat!]

In before Gaia is 6,245 years old.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Einstein built on previous work to come up with the Theory of Relativity, and Newton built on previous work to come up with the Theory of Gravity. We often remember the people who synthesized a bunch of different ideas into a coherent, systematic whole, better than we remember the people with those scattered ideas.

This reminds me of a discussion I was having earlier about whether Steve Jobs was creative or not. The other guy was pointing out that MP3 players existed before the iPod, and music organizers existed before iTunes. Yes, but Jobs’s genius was figuring out how to combine the two into a system. So which made history: Winamp and the Diamond Rio, or iTunes and the iPod?

[angryoldfatman]

But back to the subject at hand... did Darwin plagiarize his theory?

Well, it really wasn't his hypothesis/theory to begin with. He simply popularized it with the publication of The Origin of Species instead of a proper scientific article. You know, the kind of thing lambasted by the science-is-our-religion crowd when done by creationists or (God forbid) Intelligent Design proponents.

Voltaire mentioned something along the line of natural selection in his Philosophical Dictionary (Dictionnaire Philosophique) when writing about Atheism (translated by H.I. Woolf in 1924):


NEW OBJECTION OF A MODERN ATHEIST

Can one say that the parts of animals conform to their needs: what are these needs? preservation and propagation. Is it astonishing then that, of the infinite combinations which chance has produced, there has been able to subsist only those that have organs adapted to the nourishment and continuation of their species? have not all the others perished of necessity?


Even Jesus in an analogy hinted at natural selection:

Matthew 13:3-8 KJV


And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;
And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.
And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:
But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

So no, Darwin was not the genius he's been made out to be. He was just a good marketer who came along at the time everybody wanted to hear his sales pitch. Much like the other two "geniuses" who get grouped with him: Marx and Freud.