Happy Darwin Day https://t.co/3NPIqCzT68— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) February 12, 2020
International Darwin Day will inspire people throughout the globe to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking, and hunger for truth as embodied in Charles Darwin. It will be a day of celebration, activism, and international cooperation for the advancement of science, education, and human well-being.
Local and state governments will close in commemoration of the Day, and organizations and businesses will celebrate by engaging in community outreach centered around science as a tool for the betterment of humanity.
Darwin Day will be observed by the United Nations and its members as an opportunity for international partnerships through the common language of science for the common good of all.
On the Origin of the Celebration
Ever since Charles Darwin published his radically insightful book, On the Origin of Species, Darwin has been the focus of commemorations and tributes by scientists, artists, scholars, and freethinkers throughout the world. From the early gatherings after his death at his own Downe House, to bicentennial events all over the globe, celebrating science and humanity within our various cultures internationally has been a resonant and transcendent pursuit.
In 1909, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, large celebrations honoring Darwin’s contributions to science and humanity were held in Cambridge, New York and New Zealand. The University of Chicago commemorated the 100th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1959 with a series of notable events from November 24 through the 28th. The 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth saw an entire season of BBC programming on Charles Darwin himself as well as evolution and natural selection. Salem State University has successfully held an annual Darwin Festival since 1980. DarwinDay.org
"Darwin argued that humans are closely related members of a single species with a common ancestry, that all peoples have "savage" origins, that the mental capacities of all races are virtually the same, and that the races blend into one another..." “As we care about more of humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen.”
“The first step toward wisdom is the realization that the laws of the universe don’t care about you. The next is the realization that this does not imply that life is meaningless, because people care about you, and vice versa.”
“The ideals of the Enlightenment are products of human reason, but they always struggle with other strands of human nature: loyalty to tribe, deference to authority, magical thinking, the blaming of misfortune on evildoers.” g'r Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress By Steven Pinker
There is a mystery surrounding Darwin: How did this quiet, respectable gentleman, a pillar of his parish, come to embrace one of the most radical ideas in the history of human thought? Darwin risked a great deal in publishing his theory of evolution, so something very powerful--a moral fire--must have propelled him. That moral fire, argue authors Desmond and Moore, was a passionate hatred of slavery. They draw on a wealth of fresh manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks, diaries, and even ships' logs to show how Darwin's abolitionism had deep roots in his mother's family and was reinforced by his voyage on the Beagle as well as by events in America. Leading apologists for slavery in Darwin's time argued that blacks and whites were separate species, with whites created superior. Darwin believed that the races belonged to the same human family, and slavery was therefore a sin. g'r Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution by Adrian J. Desmond, James R. Moore
It’s the birthday of two men who were born on exactly the same day in 1809: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln (books by this author) was born on this day near Hodgenville, Kentucky (1809). Though he’s generally considered one of the greatest presidents in our country’s history, fairly little is known about his early life. Unlike most presidents, he never wrote any memoirs. We know that he was born in a log cabin and had barely a year of traditional schooling. His mother died when he was nine, and he spent much of his adolescence working with an ax. But when he was in his early 20s, he showed up in New Salem, Illinois, having decided to remake himself as a professional man, and to study law.
Charles Darwin (books by this author) was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England (1809). On the famous voyage to the southern tip of South America when he was only 22, Darwin brought with him a book called Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell, which suggested that the earth was millions of years old. And along the journey, Darwin got a chance to explore the Galápagos Islands. These islands were spaced far enough apart that the animals on them had evolved over time into different species.
It took him a long time to publish his findings, mainly because he was afraid of being attacked as an atheist. But about 20 years after he first came up with the idea, he published his book On the Origin of Species (1859). WA
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