Darwin Day

Thursday February 12, 2009

Darwin

Today is Darwin Day, marking two hundred years since the birth of Shropshire’s finest – or one hundred and fifty years since the publication of the Origin of Species; and there are celebrations to mark the event taking place across the world.

Two years ago, whilst travelling in Bulgaria, I read the Origin of Species from cover to cover for the first time. It is one of those books that is so talked about that you assume that you know what is in it, without having read it. As a result, I put off reading it for far too long. When I at last got round to reading it, I found myself overwhelmed by the patience and the care with which Darwin constructed his arguments, by the way that the book testifies to long hours of observation, by its patient accumulation of endless amounts of data, by its careful sifting of facts, by its the mixture of hesitancy when hesitancy is due and qualified certitude when the data seem to require it. The story goes that Alfred Russel Wallace, when he read the book, claimed to be relieved that Darwin published first, because he knew that he himself would have been incapable of producing a work of such singular care.

Why celebrate? Because Darwin’s book, as I read it, offers us the possibility of a return to a sense of at-homeness in the world, a sense that we are a part of things, no longer separated off. It presents a view of life that has to it, as Darwin wrote in the end of his book, an astonishing grandeur. It is a testament to the value of careful attention as a way of releasing us from the blindness of dogma. That is to say, I read the Origin of Species as a kind of quiet science, almost Lucretian in spirit, a science that – beyond triumphalism and clamour, and beyond the shrill assertions of the creationist rabble – offers the possibility of a new kind of poetics, a new sense of our place in the world.

How will I be celebrating Darwin Day? Not with diatribes against the wilful and darkly strange obsessions of the Biblical literalists, nor with polemics or arguments. But by leaving my desk, and going outside where I can (now that I turn my mind to it) hear the wood-pigeon calling on the roof of the house opposite, and a dog barking some way off, so that I may experience that wonder of being here at all, amongst so many of my kin.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Tags:

 
#1 · JohnFrost

12 February 2009

Well said; very well said. I wrote a blog post about Darwin and Buddhism for Darwin Day, but I think you captured something so much better than my feeble attempt. Just beautiful— that is exactly what the intersection of buddhism and evolution means to me: a Oneness with the world.

#2 · shishir

13 February 2009

Survival of the fittest.

well if we go by Darwin we must ask the question whether his theory would survive the times when every one is after one single question controversial

#3 · Barry Briggs

13 February 2009

You might be interested in today’s post on not2wo – a wonderful new Buddhist blog:

blog.not2wo.com/2009…

#4 · Lea

15 February 2009

In case you haven’t already read ‘Darwin’s Century’ (although I’d imagine you have), I think it really helped put ‘Origin’ in context. [I couldn’t embed a link here, so the Amazon link is my name, above.]

#5 · Dave Robinson

15 February 2009

I see evolutionary biology as unfolding trisna; the desire to be. I can see how ideas of the collective unconcious might be viewed through this lens too; each of us as the embodiment of the collective unfolding. And behind this unfolding this Tao, the eternal stillness.

And we never have access to the truth, we can not reach the archamedian point. All dharmas are empty. All forms are interdependant.

You can use the form below to have your say on anything in this article. Comments may be moderated before publishing, so may not show up immediately. I reserve the right to unpublish comments that are inappropriate.

You will need to preview your comment before you post it.