TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Rediscovering Darwin

ADVERTISEMENT

By KURT LOFT, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 11, 2008

TAMPA - Move over, Abraham; Charles needs a piece of your day.

As Americans remember Lincoln on his birthday Tuesday, a growing number of people around the world will honor another prominent figure born the same day - Darwin.

"Darwin Day," however, is less a memorial than a chance to motivate. Feb. 12 - when both Lincoln and Darwin were born in 1809 - is fast becoming a forum for people to re-examine the meaning of the great Victorian naturalist and the current controversies surrounding his ideas.

"I have a Darwin party every year," says Henry R. Mushinsky, a biologist at the University of South Florida. "Friends get together and we toast Darwin."

Mushinsky takes his toasts seriously. Darwin altered the path of scientific thinking with his groundbreaking book of 1859, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," which explains the mechanisms for evolution.

"Darwinism is the basis for biology because nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution," Mushinsky says. "It is the thread that holds our science together."
Advocacy groups around the world want "Darwin Day" to take on the status of a holiday, or at least give it prominence in schools. The day is meant to promote science in general and to address the forces working against sound science education.

Recent polls show that about half the population of the United States doesn't buy into Darwin. It is likely that many naysayers simply don't understand his theory. Misrepresentations of his ideas haven't helped, says Karl Giberson, professor of physics at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass., and author of the forthcoming book "Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution."

"Darwin's ideas today, paradoxically, run in two different directions," Giberson says. "Within the scientific community, they grow ever more relevant. But culturally, they grow less relevant as they continue to be rejected by conservative Christians. We now have presidents and congressmen who prefer 19th century creationism to 21st century science."

Revisiting Darwin is important in light of the growing anti-science movement in the United States, pushed forward by proponents of intelligent design, says James Costa, a professor of biology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. Intelligent design asserts that life began as a result of an intelligent creator.

"The momentum that the intelligent design movement has gained is scary," he says by telephone. "At a fundamental level, it's anti-science and undermines the understanding of science in our country today."

Darwin introduced the theory that populations evolve through a process called natural selection. In its simplest form, it describes rates of reproduction and mortality and explains life's biological diversity.

"It basically means that animals physically change through time," says Lex Salisbury, executive director of Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa. "It's like success in business: The best models survive while everything is changing."

Before Darwin, many scientists believed life was static - humans, frogs, insects, trees were created individually and remained unchanged over millennia. But during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin made astute observations, demonstrating that new species continuously rise, change and die out as a result of their environment and hereditary traits.

Darwin's importance to science can't be overstated. He continued the revolution begun by Copernicus, alerting humans to the fact that we don't occupy a central position in the universe, writes David Quammen in his 2006 book, "The Reluctant Mr. Darwin."

"Darwin denied mankind its self-assigned demigod status and includes us in the jumble of struggle and change," he writes.

Darwin challenged the thinking of the day because his observations placed humans firmly within the natural world - not above it.

"His theory really makes sense because it explains why we see what we see," says Larry Jones, president of the Institute for Humanist Studies, a nonprofit group in Albany, N.Y., dedicated to human rights and the philosophy of reason.

"It gives sense and reason to the plethora of species all around us and shows how they change. Before Darwin, there was no real understanding of why life was the way it was."

Having a "Darwin Day" to revisit the meaning of the man's theories can't hurt, but Darwin doesn't need defending, argues Andrew J. Petto, a biologist and lecturer at the National Center for Science Education at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

"The question," he says, "sort of presumes that we have not been testing and examining Darwin's ideas all along."

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FATHER OF EVOLUTION

The Institute for Humanist Studies offers details on Darwin Day at www.darwinday.org; and the American Museum of Natural History maintains a comprehensive website on Darwin at www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/.

Recommended reading:

•"The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution," by David Quammen, 304 pages (W.W. Norton), offers a condensed retrospective that unfolds as an elegant, engaging narrative.

•"Charles Darwin: Voyaging" by Janet Brown, 622 pages (Princeton University Press) is exhaustive in its coverage of the first half of Darwin's life, his exotic travels aboard the Beagle and events leading up to the formation of his theory of natural selection.

•"Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist," by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, 808 pages (W.W. Norton & Co.). This magisterial and engrossing biography is both a formidable piece of scholarship and a darned good read. If you need only one book among the dozens about Darwin, this would be it.

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT