41\u00a0 bar steady 30.16 1mph SSW dewpoint 26\u00a0 Spring<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Last Quarter Moon of Growing<\/p>\n
Charles Darwin was and is a remarkable man.\u00a0 Newton, Darwin, Einstein–an enlightenment trinity.\u00a0 An old paradigm physicist, a new paradigm physicist and the first student of complexity, a biological pioneer.\u00a0\u00a0These three have direct influence on\u00a0so much of our world:\u00a0calculus, atomic energy, genetic sciences, conservation biology, space travel, orbital mechanics.\u00a0 So much.\u00a0 To know the work of just these three and still deny the reality and power of ideas.\u00a0 Impossible.<\/p>\n
Darwin has influenced my own thinking.\u00a0 A constant question I bring to the biological world is, “How is that adaptative?”\u00a0 “What adaptative advantage does that confer?”\u00a0 These two questions alone encourage speculation about fever, pollen, phototropism, the color of plant\u00a0 leaves, the place where birds nest, bipedal locomotion and so on ad infinitum.<\/p>\n
I have multiple reading projects that will happen when I have time. One of them is to read through Darwin’s work, at least the important books.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 To separate what Darwin was about from the muddled and often inaccurate picture offered by his acolytes.\u00a0 Here’s an example.\u00a0 An instructor at the arboretum’s symposium I attended on Saturday used the term survival of the fittest.\u00a0 Not Darwin.\u00a0 Herbert Spencer.\u00a0\u00a0Spencer\u00a0used Darwin’s ideas to speculate about the succession of civilizations.\u00a0 He invented the now long ago discredited notion of social darwinism.\u00a0 Oswald Spengler brought the idea into its zenith of disrepute during the Nazi era.<\/p>\n
Darwin’s idea is natural selection.\u00a0 It is not only the fittest, that is the strongest and most competitive, that survive.\u00a0 Those also survive who have a protected niche (think islands and deep valleys), a winning reproductive strategy (seeds versus spore mats) and great defense (lion fish, poison ivy).\u00a0 The long sweep of evolutionary time favors those whose characteristics favor survival, whether the organism is the fittest in their niche or in their species or not.\u00a0 Thus, the many endemic birds of Hawai’i may well not survive in some\u00a0other environment.<\/p>\n
Here’s a brief paragraph from Wikipedia <\/a>that says this better than I can:\u00a0<\/p>\n “An interpretation of the phrase to mean “only the fittest organisms will prevail” (a view common in social Darwinism<\/a>) is not consistent with the actual theory of evolution. Any organism which is capable of reproducing itself on an ongoing basis will survive as a species, not just the “fittest” ones. A more accurate characterization of evolution would be “survival of the fit enough”, although this is sometimes regarded as a tautology<\/a>.[3]<\/a><\/sup>[4]<\/a>”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n I have added a link to the Digitial Darwin Library on the right side here.\u00a0 Allison Theil turned me on to the Darwin exhibition at the Brooklyn Botancial Garden.\u00a0 They had the link to this library.\u00a0\u00a0 In 2009 we will celebrate the 150th year of the publication of Origin of the Species.\u00a0 Much sturm und drang can be expected.\u00a0 I stand with Darwin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 41\u00a0 bar steady 30.16 1mph SSW dewpoint 26\u00a0 Spring \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Last Quarter Moon of Growing Charles Darwin was and is a remarkable man.\u00a0 Newton, Darwin, Einstein–an enlightenment trinity.\u00a0 An old paradigm physicist, a new paradigm physicist and the first student of complexity, a biological pioneer.\u00a0\u00a0These three have direct influence on\u00a0so much of our world:\u00a0calculus, atomic … Continue reading Newton, Darwin, Einstein–an Enlightenment Trinity.<\/span>