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Sunday, February 12, 2017

Darwin Day 2017




Here's a short biography of each of Darwin's children from
William Erasmus Darwin

Anne Elizabeth Darwin

Mary Eleanor Darwin

Henrietta Emma Darwin ("Etty")

George Howard Darwin

Elizabeth Darwin

Francis Darwin

Leonard Darwin

Horace Darwin

Charles Waring Darwin







  1. Thanks for this, Larry. But a couple of minor corrections:

    1. Alfred Russel Wallace is memorialized in a plaque on the wall near Darwin's grave. But he is actually buried in Broadstone in Dorset (see his Wikipedia page for a recent and appropriate marker placed at his grave).

    2. Darwin was not the first person to think of natural selection. Patrick Matthew has clear priority there. And in more casual remarks the idea goes back much further, even to Ancient Greece. But Darwin did more with the idea than anyone else, and more effectively. I strongly suspect that his discovery of the idea was original with him. though others has argued that he lifted the idea.

    1. Thanks Joe. I remember being puzzled by this plaque when I first saw it. There's nothing on the plaque to distinguish between people who are "memorialized" and people who are actually buried in the Abby. I thought it was rather strange that Wallace would be buried there since he was not a member of the establishment.

      Unfortunately, I never followed up on this so I thank you for the correction. I have deleted the incorrect information.

      The second point is more interesting. I'm going to delete "first" from the post to avoid unnecessary controversy but I'm uneasy about this. I'm convinced that Darwin thought of it all by himself in 1838 and I'm convinced that he worked the idea up to the level of an important biological hypothesis. He also provided evidence to support the concept when he published in 1859.

      I don't think we should be scouring the literature for casual mentions of similar concepts that were never promoted by their authors and never recognized as a fundamental part of evolution and then tout them as significant claims on priority.

      I call this the Ernst Mayr way of doing science. As you know, Mayr said so many different things at different times that he can lay claim to being the first to discovery everything in evolutionary biology. The fact that much of what he said was contradictory doesn't seem to bother him. I think we should give credit to those who come with an idea independently and recognize it's importance. We should recognize the people who promote, as well as discover, an idea and we should give credit to those who explain it well and provide evidence to support their idea.

      Darwin did all this and he went one step farther. He considered and evaluated all the objections to his theory and admitted its shortcomings. That's the mark of an excellent scientist.

      I find it ironic that Newton is often thought to be the greatest scientist when his claims for priority over the discovery of calculus faced much more serious challenges. Newton, was part of a serious attempt to discredit Leibniz for personal glory. That's not the mark of a good scientist.

      Newton was also a bit of a kook in other areas, such as alchemy and religion. Those are not attributes of a great scientist.

    2. To be religious is sign of not being a great scientist ? LOL

      These were not good scientists, because they believed in God ?

      Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
      Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
      Ernst Haeckel (1834 –1919)
      Erwin Schrödinger (1887 –1961)
      Francis Bacon (1561-1627)
      Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
      Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
      Guglielmo Marconi (1874 –1937)

    3. Otangelo,
      You have reading comprehension problems: "a kook in ... religion" is not the same as "religious." "LOL" back at you.

    4. Otangelo's other logic fail: To say that an attribute is not the mark of a great scientist is not to say that someone with that attribute cannot still be a great scientist.

      As always, Otangelo serves as a reminder that in order to be a creationist, it is not enough just to be ignorant of science. On must also be deficient in the ability to use logic.

      (Oh, and theists really need to stop trying to claim Einstein as one of their own. He wasn't.)

    5. haha.

      Larry shits.

      And there are his faithful servants, ready to immediately try to clean it up....


    6. So you don't realize your errors in logic, Otangelo, even when they have been pointed out to you? Why am I not surprised?

    7. Otangelo Grasso says,


      Larry shits.



      You just crossed a line.



      Patrick Mathew's argument goes well beyond a "casual mention", but he published it in an incredibly obscure place. Darwin ultimately acknowledged his priority. I am unconvinced that Darwin knew anything about Mathew's publication before 1859.

      I don't think that this detracts from Darwin (and Wallace's) great achievements, just from the argument that they were first.

    9. You just crossed a line.


      Good riddance to bad medicine.

    10. Re Larry Moran

      The argument as to who should be given credit for the discovery of calculus is irrelevant. Both Leibniz and Newton who discovered the mathematics of calculus made their discovery independently of each other so they should be given shared credit. The fact that Newton had great sensitivity on the subject should not detract from his accomplishments.

      Newton was notoriously a disputatious individual who carried on feuds with many of his contemporaries (the only one he seemed to get along with was Edmond Halley). Unlike Darwin, he was not a nice man.

    11. Speaking of "not a nice man," which Watson is IBM's computer named after, if that's known?

  2. One of my bucket list items is to visit Darwins' home.
    I am not sure if everyone would agree that Darwin was the greatest scientist who ever lived. Isaac Newton may have him beat there, but I have no dog in this fight.

    1. The greatness would depend on what the scientist is being appreciated for science, or liberation from Christianity. Newton or Blaise Pascal wouldn't have much to offer towards the latter.

    2. Considering that Newton was not a Christian, txpiper's comment is irrelevant.

    3. "Considering that Newton was not a Christian..."

      I'm sure you have a profound but uninteresting reason for believing this.

    4. Whether Newton was a Christian or not is a matter of how you define Christian. He would certainly have been considered a heretic in his day. He was an anti-trinitarian; he believed Jesus was a mediator between man and God, created by God and not part of or equal to the creator God. He wrote extensively about his beliefs, though he wisely kept these pages secret during his life.

    5. One of the places that would have tossed Newton out if he admitted that he was not a Christian was Cambridge University. Even nearly 200 years after Newton, the mathematician James Joseph Sylvester who was Jewish, studied at St. James College, Cambridge, but had to get his undergraduate and masters' degrees awarded by Trinity College Dublin because he would not swear adherence to the 39 Articles of the Church of England.

    6. Further to bwilson's comment, Newton believed that praying to Jesus was idolatry. This might make his beliefs somewhere on the fringes of Christianity, but certainly not "Christ-ian" if we wish to be literal.