Comments on: All of Darwin coming online

All of Darwin coming online

jfuller — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:12:09 -0800

Charlie Darwin joins the fray. Yes, The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits is there.

By: owhydididoit

owhydididoit — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:49:03 -0800

Rad!

By: boaz

boaz — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:51:42 -0800

You can't fool me; I know God put that vegetable mould there.

By: moss

moss — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:17:16 -0800

Wow, this is completely awesome.

By: bardic

bardic — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 19:24:28 -0800

Nice resource.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:12:34 -0800

You know, Darwin himself on his deathbed admitted that the mycelium in vegetable mould was just too complex to have been formed by the action of worms. Then he praised Jesus.

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:56:01 -0800

I would like to read, or read about, Darwin. What one book would you suggest as a starting point? A recent biography? Origin of Species? Voyage of the Beagle?

By: Falconetti

Falconetti — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:08:31 -0800

This doesn't quite answer your question stbalbach, but The Beak of the Finch does a wonderful job of using really exciting and monumental research being conducted on Galapagos right now to eludicate evolution in general, with lots of interesting biographical interudes about Darwin's life. It won a Pulitzer Prize.

By: maryh

maryh — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:45:03 -0800

I'm so glad to see this. Much thanks.

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:52:46 -0800

Remember, these are all just theories.

By: greycap

greycap — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:25:14 -0800

You beat me to posting this - this is fantastic.

By: matteo

matteo — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:02:53 -0800

IT'S ALL LIES!

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:22:10 -0800

Voyage of the Beagle is a remarkably good read stbalbach - especially if you plan on visiting any of the places he did.

By: tomsk

tomsk — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 03:05:15 -0800

That site is fantastic, can't wait to have a proper look once the traffic dies down a bit. Nice to see images as well as the text. stbalbach, I'd recommend Voyage of the Beagle too, it's a fascinating book, and gives a great insight into Darwin's love for nature and his enthusiasm for acquiring knowledge. A good place to start, I'd say.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 05:24:55 -0800

> I would like to read, or read about, Darwin. What one book would you suggest as a > starting point? A recent biography? Origin of Species? Voyage of the Beagle? There was a big Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History on the occasion of the Darwin bicentennial, put together by Niles Eldridge (the fellow who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, was responsible for the idea of "punctuated equilibrium" in evolutionary progression, an idea that hasn't swept all before it but has strongly contributed to the modern understanding of the subject, despite what Dawkins, who was wrong and an asshole about other things also, claims.) Eldridge followed up the exhibition with a book, Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life, which is a good starting point, though it isn't a general history of Darwin and his times. Instead it focuses on the growth of The Big Idea in Darwin's mind, based on his notebooks, in the (very long) interval between his return from the Beagle voyage and the publication of the Origin. If you want to really get into it, E. O. Wilson has edited and contributed essays to a single-volume edition of the four biggest of the biggies (Voyage of the Beagle, the Origin, The Descent of Man, and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.) N.b., James "double helix" Watson published a similar effort but the editions aren't complete, the additional material isn't very extensive, basically it's like he tossed it off in a weekend to make a quick buck off the Darwin bicentennial. Not Recommended, and shame on Watson.

By: Leon

Leon — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:22:35 -0800

There's Adrian Desmond's Darwin biography. Comprehensive, but long.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:36:19 -0800

jfuller: How was Dawkins wrong about punctuated equilibrium? I thought his argument against its importance was basically "Everyone knew that evolution didn't move at a constant speed".

By: matildaben

matildaben — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:13:08 -0800

David Quammen has a new Darwin bio that is short and has gotten good reviews. I've read quite a lot of his other work and I find him an excellent writer.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:19:08 -0800

> How was Dawkins wrong about punctuated equilibrium? I thought his argument against > its importance was basically "Everyone knew that evolution didn't move at a constant speed". Exactly. That's phase three of the standard three phases of acceptance of a new scientific idea: 1. It's false. 2. It's trivial, unimportant, or only occurs in a few exceptional cases. 3. We knew it all along. Reminds me of Grace Hopper revealing that there's nothing new about object-oriented languages, objects were already implicit in COBOL four decades ago. "We knew it all along" isn't Dawkins' only argument, of course. There's also the smarmy cheap shots, such as the one in The Blind Watchmaker where he refers to the "grandiloquent era...of middle-period punctuationism [which] gave abundant aid and comfort to creationists and other enemies of scientific truth."

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:07:33 -0800

Thanks for the book recommendations. "The Beak of the Finch" looks like a perfect intro, and "Voyage" can't go wrong