| Meeting Minutes of the
Freethought Association of West Michigan for February 11, 2004;
#155.
Member Jason
Pittman, who hosts the Freethought Movie Nights, held on the Sundays
prior to the regular Wednesday meetings, spearheaded “Freethinkers
on Snow Tubes.” Those interested in having fun in the snow
together are invited to Pando Ski Center on February 12 from 7PM-10PM.
Pando is located at 8076 Belding Road in Rockford. Normal price
for three hours of tubing is $10 for adults; $8 for children ages
6-10. There was a half price package offered for the first five
couples to RSVP. There is also a special group rate if more than
20 people sign up. Please RSVP to: jason@horizons.k12.mi.us.
Regarding
the Movie Nights, the next one will be on February 22, at 7PM.
For more information, contact Jason at tel. # 616-634-2471 or
at the above e-mail address, or the following one: jpittman@backpacker.com.
The next few Movie Night dates are: March 7, March 21, April 11,
April 25 and May 9.
On Tuesday,
February 17, there will be another Atheists Meet- Up, 7PM at Flanagan's
Irish Pub; 139 Pearl St., NW, Grand Rapids, MI. Tel. #: 616-454-7852.
This is not a Freethought Assoc. event but may be of interest
to some of our membership.
Our next regular
meeting topic is “The Myth of the Golden Mean” on
February 25, presented by Shane Van Oostehout and Bill Fischer,
Adjunct Professors, Kendall College of Art & Design.
Please note
that we are having our Used Book Sale fund raiser before and after
the February 25 meeting! If you have not already donated books
for this event, plan on bringing them to the next meeting and
to purchase comfortably- priced books donated by fellow freethinkers.
On February
21, George McGovern will speak at Fountain Street Church in Grand
Rapids on “The Ethics & Politics of Globalization”
which is structured in a speech and talk- back format. Point man
for the anti- war movement in the 70's, McGovern is now speaking
out on our policy on Iraq, hunger in undeveloped countries and
the role of the US and UN in the world today. One quote from the
flier: “George Bush treads carelessly on the Bill of Rights,
the United Nations and international law while creating a costly
but largely useless new federal bureaucracy called 'Homeland Security.'”
Tickets are $16 at the door or $14 in advance. For tickets or
more information call 616-913-2218 or visit: www.fountainstreet.org.
Our Annual
Freethought Picnic will be on July 10, from 12PM-5PM at Johnson
Park; 4223 Butterworth Drive, SW (near Wilson & 28th Street)
in G.R. at the Open Shelter. More info to follow as the date draws
nearer or contact Secretary (and coordinator of this event) Charles
LaRue calart@hotmail.com. Also contact Charles to volunteer for
snacks (we are covered for Feb. and March -thank you to the volunteers
for this!- or to submit items you would like to see included in
the meeting minutes.
The American
Atheists organization president, Ellen Johnson, will be our special
guest speaker on July 28, where she will address “Civil
Rights for Atheists and the Challenges Ahead.”
Member Gina
is working to start a Freethought Student Group at GRCC and had
with her materials regarding this. For more information, contact
her at: veginashumway@email.grcc.edu.
Our topic
for this meeting was “Dogma, Doctrine & Deduction; Darwin's
Life of Discovery” presented ably and with characteristic
verve by FAoWM member, Dr. Gregory Forbes. He is a Professor of
Biological Sciences @ GRCC; Education Director of the Michigan
Evolution Education Initiative, and Director of the Science Education
Center. He is a tireless champion of grounding students in a solid
foundation of understanding in biological evolution. And, we found
out tonight, Professor Forbes had recently won the “Teacher
of the Year” award. His spellbinding presentation this night
illuminated why he was an apt recipient of this award.
This meeting
was also a “Darwin Day” celebration. Many groups of
our ilk celebrate the birthday of Darwin annually on February
12, when he was born in Shrewsbury, England, 195 years ago (in
1809.) For this special occasion, we had a birthday cake provided
by Board member, Jan Van Oosterhout.
T. Dobzhansky
famously stated that “nothing in biology makes sense, except
in the light of evolution.” Charles Darwin was the co-discoverer
of the principle mechanism of evolutionary descent, which became
the single most important organizing principle to the theory of
evolution, itself (as Dobzhansky alluded to) the foundational
cornerstone of understanding in biological sciences.
In addition
to his mechanism of descent with modification via natural selection,
where organisms adapted to changing environments, Darwin proposed
sexual selection as another driving force in sculpting the phenotype
of organisms. All of these conceptual elements were anathema to
the Victorian society he was born into; the power of female choice
in mate selection- dictating what characteristics would likely
flourish or perish, the idea of geological changes over time creating
novel environmental niches for organisms to occupy, be supplanted
by or adapt- to- or die and where all biota arose from a common
anscestor...all of these conjectures flew in the face of a society
where women were seen as passive, the landscape changed insignificantly
over time and both it and all the inhabitants of the Earth were
created by Divine fiat in a single week, a few thousand years
ago, pretty much in their present state and all as separate acts
of creation.
Dr. Forbes
noted that whole books had been written about different aspects
of Darwin's life. To give a complete presentation on the contributions
of this remarkable individual would be impossible in a single
lecture, but Forbes hit on all the main themes, corrected a couple
well worn myths and summarized his youth. This last matter is
important in understanding an individual; what fortuitous events
and people shaped one's life, chance events in history that favored
certain outcomes as opposed to others, etc. Biological evolution
itself is a result of such unplanned, undirected contingencies,
rather than any master plan or Grand Design. Chance events in
the environment clear out niches once occupied by certain organisms,
for instance, allowing others to fill them by adaptation, which
sets in motion further fluctuations. The famous example of this
is the asteroid that struck the Earth at the KT temporal boundary
that, among other things, served to extinguish the long reign
of the dinosaurs, which allowed the wee insectivorous mammals
at the time to have sudden access to environmental niches they
were formerly blocked from. Growing in size and diversity, they
would lead to the evolution of the primates and a twig on a branch
of hominds that would squeak through as a sole surviving species
of Homo that is represented by we modern humans.
One of the
myths of Charles Darwin's life is that he came up with the concept
of evolution. This is as erroneous as thinking that Henry Ford
invented the automobile. The basic understanding that life has
changed over time goes back a long way with the kernels and seeds
scattered about. As with the scientific theories of gravity and
heliocentrism, evolution required a mechanism, and a testable
body of research and evidence to make sense of all the disparate
facts pointing to the biological descent of organisms and that
was what he did. Charles' own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, a poet,
philosopher, naturalist and physician, published on evolution
in his book Zoonomia (Life on Earth), where he stated that all
life had arisen from one living filament.
A lucky accident
of birth caused Darwin to be born the son of a well to do physician
(himself the son of a doctor), Robert Darwin. This allowed the
intellectually curious Charles to be free of the constraints of
finding a practical job to devote all his energies to, but instead
lead a fairy carefree childhood of collecting bugs, hunting and
otherwise experiencing and exploring the natural world. He would
later marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, of the wealthy and famous
Wedgwood china fame, which would perpetuate his liberty from pursuits
not in line with his innate interests.
Darwin's mother,
Susannah, died when he was eight years old and he was reared in
his large family by his father. At age thirteen, Dr. Forbes told
us, Charles set up a chemistry lab in the garden shed at “The
Mount” (his birthplace in Shrewsbury). This started the
inquisitive youth on learning the basic principles of scientific
investigation. Amazingly, the man who would become one of the
greatest of naturalists, never had any formal scientific training.
Eventually,
his idyllic existence of fishing and hiking and hanging out with
friends would have to bend to the course of adulthood pursuits
and Robert sought for his son the same avenue as he and his father
had trekked down-- that of being a physician. He enrolled the
sixteen year old in medical school at Edinburg in Scotland, where
he met the first in a series of influential people to the shaping
of his life; John Edmonstone, who taught him taxidermy. Edmonstone
was a freed slave, which bore upon young Darwin's mind when he
saw human bondage firsthand in other lands, and furthered his
already iconoclastic view of life, including the races of humankind.
While wholly disinterested in the career of medicine, he soaked
up taxidermy (and other peripheral teachings that he would employ
in his later work) swiftly. It is also in his first year at university
that he comes to read the book The Natural History of Selborne
which helps fuel his interest in nature beyond hunting and fishing.
In his summer reprieve, he assiduously collects beetles which
would later lead him to begin questioning the dogma of separate
“kinds” of animals- but all basically the same within
those kinds. Why would a Divine Creator make such a stupendous
number of different species of beetle? Would not a single representative
be sufficient for beetle- kind?
The 17 year
old Darwin finds himself in his second year of med school, bankrolled
by his father, but spends most of his time in the natural history
museum. He also begins attending the Plinian Society where he
is exposed for the first time in examining nature from a non-theistic
perspective. This sudden freedom from dogma is an exhilarating
experience for the budding naturalist. At 18, he studies marine
biology, dissection and Lamarckian evolution under the informal
tutelage of Scottish zoologist, Robert Grant, who among other
contributions to marine biology, discovered that sponges are actually
animals, not plants as had been previously believed. However,
the facile-minded student begins to surpass the older zoologist.
Darwin enters the scientific arena for the first time, presenting
a paper at the Plinian Society on marine embryology. He finds
the experience of intellectually holding forth among other keen
minds on scientific matters exciting. He, by this time, is bitten
hard by the naturalist bug even as any hopes for him becoming
a medical doctor slip further into the distance. At 18, he quits
medical school. Biographical accounts of the young Darwin suggest
that the possible last straw for him was in witnessing a twelve
year old girl being operated on with three doctors surrounding
her. Two of the men were there mainly to hold down the adolescent,
writhing in excruciating pain, due to the fact that this was a
time predating anesthetics.
Dr. Forbes
presented this as Darwin's second “What to do?” moment.
Enter “plan B”--Darwin is enrolled at Christ's College
at Cambridge University to become a clergyman. As with others
who were fascinated by the natural world and experiment, Darwin
found the life of a theology student one conducive to granting
him a great deal of time for his own personal pursuits. It is
possible, as just one example, that the “father of genetics,”
Gregor Mendel, would have been lost to humanity had he been forced
to be a laborer, rather than having the freedom to study variation
in his beloved pea plants in the monastery garden. But his time
at Cambridge provided Darwin with more fortunate opportunities
as well. There, he meets the botanist, Rev. John Henslow. There
simply were not people called scientists in this time, but many
who were drawn to spiritual endeavors, sought the will, mind and
handiwork of God through His creations and became “natural
theologians.” Many of these people made considerable contributions
to our understanding of the natural world, even while holding
onto beliefs that were wed to the supernatural realm.
Henslow gets
Darwin excited about the scientific study of life, opens doors
for him and permits him to hear stimulating lectures. Henslow
sees in Darwin the nascent blooming of his “gifts.”
Just as medical school was not for Darwin, by 1828, he confides
to his friend, John Herbert, his doubts about entering the clergy.
But at age 19 he returns again to Cambridge and rooms, ironically,
where the Rev. William Paley once slept. Paley is essentially
the godfather of what has now become known as Intelligent Design
Theory (while having nothing to do with what constitutes a scientific
theory) by the New Creationists. Paley asserted that just as one
who stumbles upon a complex of interconnected parts in the form
of a watch infers an artificer of that item, one must then surely
see in the manifestation of a complex living organism the hand
of a Designer as well. For more on this, see the meeting minutes
where Dr. Forbes addressed Paley's notions and others all the
way up to the present with M. Behe and his contribution of “irreducible
complexity” while surveying “the many unintelligent
designs in nature.”
Another influential
person Charles meets at this time is Frederick Hope, an entomologist,
who gets him excited about the more scientific study of insects.
At 21 years of age, Darwin is found spending increasing amounts
of time with Henslow and decides to become a “country clergyman/naturalist”
in the mold of many others of this time. It was thought to be
in the Renaissance Man tradition to have studies in nature as
part of one's life, no matter one's actual vocation (at least
for those who could afford to spend time, energy and money on
avocational pursuits.)
Even though
he was not personally invested in theological studies, when he
matriculated at age 22, he placed 10th out of 178 students in
his exams at Christ's College. This is another myth that Professor
Forbes dispelled—Darwin's supposedly lackluster academic
abilities. His reading at this time was William Paley's book,
Natural Theology, Hershel's Preliminary Discourse on the Study
of Natural History and von Hembolt's seven volume set regarding
the author's naturalist adventures in South America, all of which
further stimulate and excite young Darwin. He gets a powerful
urge to travel and see first hand the things he has only read
about up until this time. He plans a trip to the Canary Islands
with his friend Marmaduke Ramsay but Ramsay dies and he has to
forgo this trip.
Darwin is
introduced by Henslow to the geologist, Adam Sedgwick. He and
Darwin travel to Wales to learn field geology which becomes a
preoccupation for the 22 year old. When he learns that beetles
can fossilize, he perceives delightedly that he can work as a
geologist while at the same time uncovering his beloved beetles
and studying them further.
A pivotal
point in Darwin's life is reached. He has the opportunity to embark
on what would become a seminal experience for him and the world;
recruitment on the H.M.S. Beagle voyage under Captain Fitz Roy.
Rev. Henslow recommends him for the trip. What many people do
not realize is that Darwin was not enlisted as the ship's naturalist;
they already had one, but again, it was his accident of birth
in class conscious Victorian England that would afford him the
chance to be the Captain's Companion. The captain, being of an
elevated station in life, was socially excluded from mingling
with his crew, they being of a lower class. The long social exile
at sea would have proven to be an unendurable prospect, if he
had no one of his class to speak with. Indeed, the previous captain
had committed suicide under such conditions.
His father,
however, was not supportive of this venture, wondering if his
son would ever settle into a respectable and responsible life.
Charles enlists the aid of his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, to appeal
to Dr. Darwin on his behalf. The elder Darwin respects Wedgwood's
opinion and upon his approval, calling it a “wonderful opportunity”,
Robert Darwin relents and agrees to fund his son's adventure.
Even then, Darwin was not a shoe- in. Had not two others refused
to set sail on the Beagle in the role of Captain's Companion,
he would have been left landlocked.
So on December
27, 1831, at the age of 22, Darwin departs Plymouth for what was
supposed to be a two- hour voyage on the 90 foot long ship with
72 people on board. This trip became considerably longer. Another
contingency proves to be serendipitous for young Darwin-- he becomes
seasick! As awful as that was for him, it had the side effect
of his being allowed to spend longer periods on land, providing
him for more opportunities to study nature and collect his specimens.
These specimens would become so copiously accumulated that they
would fill some two- dozen crates, requiring warehousing, by the
time he had completed his time on board the Beagle.
The voyage
doubled in time from what it set out to be, ballooning into four
years. The Captain and crew bypassed the Canary Islands, went
by the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Cape Horn, the Galapagos, New
Zealand, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, South America again,
back up to Cape Verde, etc. Yet another myth that our presenter
put to rest was that the Galapagos experience was Darwin's epiphany.
This was indeed a fascinating encounter, but mostly, for him,
it was just icing on the cake among the concatenated series of
interesting places. Before the end of the voyage, Darwin does
become the ship's official naturalist but once again, as a result
of strange happenstances. Among his many strange finds, he comes
across evidence for nine foot long armadillos, Capybaras (rodents
now the size of pigs) that had been the size of horses and other,
older forms of presently living creatures. He also notes that
fossils appear different in different stratas of rock, with each
layer seeming to contain beings of a specific time frame and even
more intriguing, he saw greater complexity of bodily “design”
in the strata closer to the surface and conversely more “primitive”
examples in lower ones. He also found the creationist's paradigm-challenging
bounty of examples of different habitats producing disparate species
of a common “kind.” Again, he wondered why the Creator
would see a need to produce a new variation of organism for every
different kind of environment.
After traveling
around the southern tip of South America, he has landfall again
and experiences an earthquake for the first time. Again, this
is one of those thought-shifting occurrences that but for contingency,
he would not have known of directly. He witnesses portions of
the harbor rise up eleven feet and other significant, sudden alterations
of the surrounding land. He ponders how to reconcile this abrupt
change in environment with the dogma of a static Earth and similarly
changeless organisms. Creatures would have to adapt to survive
the wild convolutions of the Earth and, given sufficient time,
the accumulation of changes might produce great adaptations in
the biota, and create sudden disappearances of native populations
that other creatures would have to alter to take over effectively.
This was very heady stuff for the young naturalist.
The Galapagos
was where the thoughts that had been gestating in his mind began
to jell. Not a “eureka” moment, but more a steeping.
Different ways of “making a living” caused different
biological/morphological solutions. Populations that became separated
from the common stock differentiated to the point where they could
no longer breed with each other. Birds on islands that had not
needed flight became thicker legged and stumpier winged. Ones
that had to crack hard nuts developed offspring with beaks optimal
for that practice, whereas ones that needed longer slimmer ones
for their way of nourishment- getting evolved a version of beak
suitable for that life. He arrives back in England at age 27.
One would think that with so much bubbling just beneath the surface;
being fraught with all these exciting ideas, Dr. Darwin's son
would have lost no time in publishing...however one of the world's
most famous books-- The Origin of Species-- would have to wait
almost 22 years. During that time, he wrote deeply researched,
lengthy tomes on other, infinitely less controversial natural
matters, including on the behavior of earthworms and to what degree
they change topographical features as they burrowed through the
ground.
Once home
again, Darwin gathers together such luminaries in their fields
of study as Adam Sedgwick, Henslow and, among others, Sir Charles
Lyell, the great Scottish geologist who wrote the seminal work
“Principles of Geology” that had a great effect on
Darwin's thinking. Lyell shared James Hutton's belief that the
present is the key to understanding the past and held that fossils
were the best guides to describing geologic rock layers. He was
also one of the first to postulate that the Earth is millions
of years old (off by a long shot but a far grander expanse of
time than had been granted previously). Darwin bounced his ideas
off of them to test his thinking on the matters that had absorbed
him for the last few years. At 28, he gives a speech to the Royal
Geological Society where he states, in contradiction to Lyell,
that animals adapt to changing environments and he questions Paley
and other arguments for the biblically based stories of Creation.
These “sacred writings” accounts simply no longer
hold water for him any more for their explanatory value of what
can be observed in the natural world.
The ornithologist,
John Gould, is introduced to Darwin and is asked to examine Darwin's
collection of birds. His famous finches and what they tell of
evolution are clarified in this investigation. So much variety
is seen from one common source. Darwin finally comes to call what
he has been seeing “transmutation” but for this highly
charged declaration, he knew he would have to marshal a great
deal of evidence in support of it to withstand the firestorm of
assault he knew it would suffer. He would have to answer many
questions such as what causes organisms to adapt to their environments,
how do new species form and why are different animals that are
in the same environmental niche often exhibit similar physical
characteristics, while others that are more closely related but
in quite different environments show a more diverse body type.
Knowing that
what he was discovering was highly heretical, Darwin suffered
a crisis of conscience. When he told his brother about it, he
said it was analogous to confessing a murder. His brother was
not scandalized however, since the thinking was in keeping with
their revered grandfather, Erasmus', writings.
Thomas Robert
Malthus, the British economist, was highly influential to Darwin's
thinking as he was to Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection
theory. His writings had to do with the problems encountered in
expanding human populations, including competition over resources
where there is struggle to survive. Darwin refashioned his arguments
in a way that explained how any slight variation in an organism
that conferred upon that individual a “leg up” in
the competition for gathering resources or reproducing effectively
would be preserved and passed onto its offspring, gradually changing
the complexion of the population.
Dr. Forbes
mentioned the Sandwalk where Darwin pondered and wrestled with
his thoughts as he trod the circular course by Down House where
Darwin and his wife and their children resided.
Darwin shared
his ideas with Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the British plant taxonomist
and world explorer, who also examined his specimens and was not
offended by their portent. Then, when Darwin read Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation, seeing much of his own heresy
published, only lacking the mechanism of evolution, he was further
emboldened, temporarily, to publish, writing a 35 page abstract
on transmutation. But the fears crept back—worries over
offending family, being ostracized by larger society and concerns
over giving fuel to the atheists who might exploit the information.
Professor
Forbes spoke of the different approaches to coming to one's belief
system including the mystical way, the gut feeling approach and
the empirical way. Only the last approach can be used to arrive
at scientific truths since the scientist cannot say “I just
have a feeling that this is right.” The empirical method
demands that one present evidence that can be reviewed, tested,
and where results can be replicated. Data generated must link
up fruitfully to other established observed aspects of the natural
world. The claims made must hold up to intense scrutiny and not
be immune, via the assumed authority of the claimant, to falsification.
In Darwin's
time the Church had automatic authority. Whatever contradicted
its teachings was labeled false (and heretical) and what simply
could not be looked at any other way than how the scientific evidence
indicated, was desperately shoehorned into the biblical account,
no matter how poor the fit. The Church had simply been the sole
repository of knowledge for the ages and for the masses. It is
very hard to pull away from mainstream belief and one is seldom
rewarded for the extra effort that such a wrenching, breaking
away entails. It is far easier to hold to simplistic tales that
showcase humans as the special pet and creation of a beneficent
deity that has a “plan” for Its creations. Conversely,
it is harder head- work, investigating the ego-deflating evidence
for humanity's rather late emergence on life's stage and being
linked back through the eons to a common, humble first self- replicator.
Life is messy and amoral-- there is no reward nor punishment meted
out in capricious mass extinctions, contingencies of Earth's turmoil,
or the make-do use of organs “good enough” but not
perfectly ”designed” for the new purposes they have
been pressed into do not auger well for any special supernatural
planning or intention. Life forms perish and enjoy temporary successes
apparently independent of any discernible Plan, where just as
no superintending entity can be sensibly praised for what humans
deem as “good” in nature, such an entity cannot, then,
be “blamed” either, for the cruel and seemingly senseless
violence and bloodiness of “nature red in tooth and claw.”
As predator and prey ratchet up in “improvements”
(to kill or flee from being killed), does a Divine Tinkerer cause
these arms race changes for the purpose of prolong the bloodsport?
In 1856, Darwin
does a “trial run” of his ideas on transmutation at
meetings at Down House among an eclectic group of esteemed individuals.
One of which was Thomas Henry Huxley, who would come to be referred
to as “Darwin's Bulldog.” Where Charles Robert Darwin
was more timid and fearful of reproach; given to many bouts of
physical ailments that kept him house-bound, and more shy and
retiring-- Huxley was bold and dynamic and fearless in debate
and tireless in his staunch advocacy of Darwin's “view of
life.”
Then came
the bombshell for Darwin. Another British naturalist, Alfred Russel
Wallace, came upon the same conclusions regarding natural selection
as the driving mechanism for biological change as had Darwin himself,
mostly derived from his travels in the Malay Archipelago. Wallace
was in many ways the opposite of Darwin in background—born
with little means or status, Darwin's junior in age, having no
family or professional connections to assist him, he made his
living by selling his collected specimens. He had never published
and never been endorsed by other naturalists. He knew of Darwin
by reputation and sought the older naturalist's approval and critique
of his ideas on the “tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely
from the original type.” Darwin had been scooped. While
Charles had been researching and working over the data on his
finds for a couple decades-plus, and had therefore far more time,
energy, and detail and attention poured into his theory, Wallace
still had the basic elements of his theory laid out in succinct
fashion from his own independent explorations.
While there
is much of historical interest between the preceding paragraph
and this one, the upshot is that Darwin (in a grand gesture) requests
that both Wallace's and his outlines be presented to the Royal
Linnean Society, where the world is introduced to “Evolution
by Means of Natural Selection” in 1858. Extracts from Darwin's
1839 manuscript on species variation, and from a letter by Darwin
to Asa Gray, establish the naturalist of Down House's priority,
while still crediting Wallace as the co-discoverer of natural
selection theory. The incredible result from this presentation
was that it was recorded by the Linnean Society that “nothing
of consequence occurred in this year.” Wow!
Then as now,
however, scientists worked in a “publish or perish”
sphere of endeavor. On November 26, 1859, Charles Darwin released
his first edition of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection. This time, the world changed forever from the release
of this powerful tome.
Darwin's feat
was even more spectacular considering that the vastly greater
age of the Earth that we now know (save for Young Earth Creationists)
was unsuspected in his time, there was a dearth of powerful fossils
to bolster his claims then and, most significantly, he was innocent
of the knowledge of genetics! The irony regarding this that Dr.
Forbes presented was that when people had gone through Darwin's
personal papers after he died, a letter from an then- unknown
Monk, Gregor Mendel, was found... unopened! Darwin had held in
his very hands one of the most important validations of his theory
at that time, yet that letter had remained sealed during his life.
Since his
time, his theory has been validated several fold by a great increase
in knowledge from far ranging fields of scientific study. It remains
the most or at least one of the most robust scientific discoveries
of all time. This “universal acid” as D. Dennett has
termed evolutionary theory, has cut through every long held false
belief of our ancestry and the manner in which life works and
while much more has been added to the basic foundations that Darwin
laid, his essential scientific assertions have weathered the test
of time and almost continual assault for the last nearly 145 years.
Darwin died
at age 73 on April 19, 1882 and was buried at Westminster Abbey
next to Sir Isaac Newton.
Secretary:
Charles LaRue
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