Celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday
This week, countries all over the world are celebrating 200 years since scientist Charles Darwin was born. People are doing their bit to celebrate evolution and we are no exception. While many Answers users may be marking the day (it was the 12th February) in their own way, few people are as qualified as biologist Calimecita, who we just happened to spot sporting a tribute to him in her Answers nickname. This is what Darwin Day means to her, in her own words…
“First and foremost, I don’t like the idea of “idolising” a person. Charles Darwin was a man, an individual that was clearly as multidimensional as each of us, and therefore any analyses of him as an individual can and will be very complex – and also widely contradictory.
Yet here I am, celebrating his birthday anniversary – even with my Answers nickname, – Why?
Because what I’m celebrating is the fact that a single individual’s intellectual production can be a major contribution to the human species. To me, that is truly inspiring. So what did he do?
In an outstanding example of conceptual synthesis, Charles Darwin was able to “catch” concepts and data that were “floating around” in different spheres of human knowledge, put them together and come up with a new corpus of ideas (it’s important to note that Alfred Russell Wallace achieved the same synthesis separately – and that perhaps without him, Darwin’s work would not have been published at the time). This corpus integrates the fact of evolution with the mechanisms that make it possible (Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection), and has been since that time the cornerstone of biological science.
The famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky once said “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. I’ll just add that even though it is possible to use a non-evolutionary approach to study some aspects of biology, everything just makes much more sense in the light of evolution.
In my daily work, I’m constantly trying to understand the evolutionary processes that underlie the diversity I see. My awareness of evolutionary mechanisms does not detract from my appreciation of life… On the contrary, it enhances the delight I feel when I find myself not only contemplating life on Earth, but also studying and understanding a part of it and trying to make my own tiny contributions to our collective knowledge of biological evolution.”
Calimecita
* Read more about Calimecita’s work here and here and here.
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