The Necessity of Darwin
Correspondence: (Login to view email address)
- Professor, Hartwick College, Oneonta, NY, USA
- Hon. Professor, University of Exeter, UK
- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 19 February 2009 10:12 UTC; Posted 23 February 2009
- Subjects:
- Genetics & Genomics, Molecular Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology
- Abstract:
February 12th, 2009 was Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and November 2009 represents the 150th anniversary of the publication of his transformative book, The Origin of Species. It seems a good time to look back and assess Darwin’s legacy within the perspective of current knowledge of genetics, cytogenetics, and molecular biology in general. Although a comprehensive understanding of evolution would no doubt have emerged eventually, it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have matched Darwin’s prodigious and sustained efforts, as well as his talent for explaining things in simple terms.
Discussion
- Votes:
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14 votes
- Comments:
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5 comments
Darwin is the most popular and respected scientist who changed the way people look at the world. Nice article.
DMR Sekhar.Relevant and informative.
Let us simply be honest and precise/scientific like a child would be. How could any child think Darwin necessary when his idea of natural selection had existed years before he found it? Why ignore Patrick Matthew in a profession where proper claim to credit is very important? When an idea can be independently had by no less than three persons in a span of ~30 years, can any single one of the three be legitimately/logically singled out as necessary, prodigious, and a genius? Isn’t it intuitively obvious that the more trivial the problem, the more people who can independently solve it?
True that Darwin made evolution popular but who is to say that Wallace cannot do the same thing? Amassing data to support an idea is much less important than having the idea in the first place. Besides, we should really give credit to Mendel, the re-discoverers of Mendel, and the NeoDarwinists for resurrecting Darwin and making Darwin more popular today than in his days. Mendel had very little data but his lonesome status as the father of genetics is more like what a genius should be like.
I understand your point of view and simply do not agree with it. As my theses adviser told me once, “Ideas are cheap”. Darwin not only had the idea, but also amassed a large amount of supporting information. I’m not sure Mendel was necessarily the lonesome genius you take him to be, and anyway, I’m sure there are plenty of “lonesome geniuses” out there who never get anywhere, cheating themselves as well as others by not knowing how to communicate effectively with others. I think a large part of Darwin’s genius was in knowing how to make connections and communicate his ideas and findings.
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Additional information
- License:
- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
- How to cite this document:
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Sessions, Stanley and Macgregor, Herbert. The Necessity of Darwin. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.2887.1> (2009)
- Version info:
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Other versions of this document in Nature Precedings
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Louise Hecker on 10 March 2009 15:13 UTC
Very nice!