29 December 2005 Filed in:
Darwin NewsThe ruling by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones that the the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania cannot teach Intelligent Design as part of the Science curriculum strikes a blow for logic. That’s not to say that Darwinism and Creationism (or any other religious view) should not go head to head (as they are in Looking for Darwin): but there is a time and a place and the science curriculum is not one of them. The judge got it right when he concluded that so-called Intelligent Design is nothing more than religion dressed up as science. Read More...Tags:Intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones, Pennsylvania, Science, Darwinism, Creationist, Creationism
02 December 2005 Filed in:
Darwin NewsA new and extensive exhibition on Darwin has opened at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. It runs until 29 May 2006 and even features live Galapagos Tortoises. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, American Museum of Natural History, Darwin exhibition
I’ve recently been taking a break from writing Looking for Darwin to write a series of articles for New Zealand’s major national newspaper, the Sunday Star-Times. The series is called Back to Nature and it is my very personal look at the people who have been among the greatest advocates for Nature. You can read my account of Stephen J. Gould here: a man I admired for his views on Nature but detested when his own nature was on view.Tags:Stephen J. Gould, Nature, Looking for Darwin, Charles Darwin, Sunday Star-Times
Darwin came to New Zealand – the far north – but he didn’t stay long and he didn’t like it. I’m trying to imagine what he may have experienced had he wandered to the South Island and the rugged mountains of the Southern Alps. Unlike the Andes in South America, he would have observed that these were very young mountains, perhaps 5 to 7 million years old. But I think what he would have noticed most – at least it was what I noticed most when I tried to put myself in his shoes – would have been the preponderance of white flowers and butterflies. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Adaptation, White apline flowers, White butterflies, Pollination, New Zealand, Southern Alps
I’ve not long finished researching and writing an article on Rachel Carson for the national Sunday newspaper in New Zealand. The article, naturally enough, was about pesticides, but it roamed into the area of breast cancer inasmuch as there is a suggested link between pesticides and breast cancer and, as fate would have it, Carson died of breast cancer. While I did not include this in the article, it seems apparent that our changing lifestyles are having a big impact on the dramatic increase in the rate of breast cancer over the last 100 years. Read More...Tags:Breast cancer, Rachael Carson, Pesticides, Oestrogen, Charles Darwin, Menstrual cycle, Period, Natural Selection
I’ve just finished writing about Darwin’s experiences in the Galapagos Islands and, surprizingly, it took less time and less space than I had originally anticipated. On reflection I can see that this should not have been a surprize because Charles Darwin spent a relatively trifling amount of time in the Galapagos considering the duration of his journey on the Beagle and, when there, it certainly did not strike him as the key to evolution as it has often been portrayed. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Galapagos Islands, Evolution, Natural Selection, Finches, Galapagos Tortoise, Flamingoes, Galapagos penguin
25 September 2005 Filed in:
Darwin News | Darwin's Later LifeIt was my dog’s birthday yesterday. Mocha, a chocolate lab, is a marvel of evolution that surely would have made Charles Darwin proud. That she could cause literally thousands of dollars worth of damage and still live to experience her second birthday tells me that she knows more about survival of the fittest than I can ever hope to discover during the process of writing this book. Of course, I love her: but I love her in spite of her naughtiness, not because of it. Read More...Tags:Dog, Charles Darwin, Polly, Terrier, Looking for Darwin, Survival of the Fittest, Mocha, Labrador
Darwin’s final staging post before pushing off the South American continent for the Galapagos Islands was Peru. Recently I have been researching and writing about that part of the Voyage of the Beagle. But I have also been using it as an opportunity to digress and explore the relationship between religion and the indigenous South Americans, from rampant Catholicism to the beliefs that preceded the Spanish invasion. Read More...Tags:Monastery, Lima, Catacombs, Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Monasterio de San Francisco
29 August 2005 Filed in:
Darwin News 2009 will be the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. A website has been formed by a group in the United States with the aim of co-ordinating celebrations to acknowledge Darwin’s contribution to our lives. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, 200th anniversary, Birth, The Origin of Species, Looking for Darwin
When I visited Shrewsbury, Charles Darwin’s birthplace, I was appalled at how little effort the city made to acknowledge the greatness that it had spawned. Here is the place where Darwin spent his formative years and yet you’d need the eyes of an eagle to spot any celebration of that fact. His home is, bizarrely, home to the Shrewsbury Valuation Office; his old school (now the library) has a statue but nothing else; and where, oh where, are the signs at the entrance to the city that should proclaim to the visitor that they are about to enter biology’s hallowed turf? Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Shrewsbury, Darwin's birthplace, Birth
18 August 2005 Filed in:
Darwin NewsA publisher has urged me, in no uncertain terms, to take down the extracts from Looking for Darwin that I had posted. I admit that it is a difficult issue. Obviously by posting contents that I intend to publish in printed form later, it could be construed that I have “devalued” them somewhat by putting them on the internet beforehand for all the world to see. Also, the publisher worried that others might steal my words. And while that may well be the sincerest form of flattery, in my view someone would have to be pretty desperate to do that. Read More...Tags:Looking for Darwin, Charles Darwin, Evolution, Theory of Evolution, Publisher
This Thing of Darkness, a novel by Harry Thompson about FitzRoy and Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, has made the longlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2005. The book has only just been released and I have not been able to get my hands on a copy in New Zealand yet; but by all accounts it is a ripping yarn that focuses on the conflicting views and, eventually, lives, of FitzRoy and Darwin. Read More...Tags:This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson, Booker Prize, Looking for Darwin, Fitzroy, Charles Darwin
14 August 2005 Filed in:
Darwin's Early Life
Darwin’s bedroom: the room in which he was born, The Mount
Darwin was brought up in Shrewsbury in a house called The Mount. I went to Shrewsbury and The Mount to check out where it all began and to see if I could not fathom something in the life of a young boy growing up there that may have contributed to his later outlook on the world. Read More...Tags:Darwin's birthplace, The Mount, Shrewsbury, Darwin's bedroom, Places Darwin lived
The cover story in the current issue of Time Magazine is headlined “Evolution Wars”. It reports on the growing push within the United States to have “Intelligent Design” taught alongside evolution in schools as an alternative theory. Perhaps the most telling line in the whole article is the one that quotes the results of a Harris poll of 1,000 American adults: “54% did not believe humans had developed from an earlier species”. Read More...Tags:Time Magazine, Evolution, Charles Darwin, Evolution wars, Looking for Darwin, Intelligent design, Natural Selection
12 August 2005 Filed in:
The Voyage of the Beagle
The Touring Club, Trelew: more Jurassic Park than Waldorf-Astoria
I have recently completed writing about Darwin’s travels in Argentina. In doing the research for it, I travelled twice to the Patagonian city of Trelew. I say city, but in every way other than the number of people that live there, it is really just a town. And a town without much to recommend it, save for being the gateway to the animal-encrusted Peninsula Valdés and the home of the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Darwin hotel, The Touring Club, Carnotaurus, Trelew, Museo Paleontologico Egido Feruglio, Punta Alta, Argentina
08 August 2005 Filed in:
Darwin's Early Life
Bust of Erasmus Darwin on garden wall of Darwin House, Lichfield.
To understand the developmental influences that contributed to Charles Darwin’s arrival at a place that sat outside the Church and resulted in his theory of evolution by natural selection, one needs to go back to his family. His grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, in particular was no ordinary grandparent. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, Grandfather, Darwin House, Lichfield
My daughter pointing to a fossil she has found in the Burgess Shale.I have just returned to New Zealand from a research trip for Looking for Darwin. One of the highlights was a hike to the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park, Canada – the site made famous by the fossilized bodies of weird creatures found at no other place on Earth. Read More...Tags:Charles Darwin, Stephen J. Gould, Burgess Shale, Daughter, Fossils, Qualcott Quarry
31 July 2005 Filed in:
Darwin NewsThe above topic title was the one automatically assigned to this first post by WordPress – the engine that is powering this blog – and I have retained it because it seems especially appropriate. Firstly, greetings to the world – I hope this reaches a wide audience and that we can enjoy this journey together! Secondly, this site is devoted to developing an understanding of the world: it is based upon my experiences associated with writing a book called Looking for Darwin where I am attempting to unravel what this life and this world are all about. How did we get here? Read More...Tags:Looking for Darwin, blog, Lloyd Spencer Davis, Charles Darwin, Natural Selection, Introduction, Evolution
