You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 1st, 2007.
when I read this, it made me think that many things haven’t changed.
It was on this day in 1858 that a paper by Charles Darwin about his theory of evolution was first presented to a public audience. Darwin had actually come up with the theory twenty years before that, in 1837. Back then, he drafted a thirty-five page sketch of his ideas and arranged with his wife to publish the sketch after his death. Then, for the next twenty years, he told almost no one about the theory. He practically went into hiding, moving to a small town and living like a monk, with specific times each day for walking, napping, reading, and backgammon. He was so reclusive that he even had the road lowered outside his house, to prevent passersby from looking in the window.
He was reluctant to publish his ideas, because he didn’t want to create a controversy by offending anyone’s religious beliefs. Atheism was a crime punishable by prison at the time, and Darwin feared that people would object to the idea that God hadn’t created each creature individually. When he finally told one of his friends about his theory of evolution, he said it was like confessing a murder.
But then after his daughter died of typhoid, Darwin began to worry that his children might not be able to provide for themselves. So, to help assure his children’s well-being, he began writing a book about evolution, which he hoped would become a scientific classic. He worked on the book seven days a week. He had struggled to complete a quarter of a million words when, on June 18, 1858, he learned that a man named Alfred Russel Wallace was about to publish a paper about a similar theory. In order to get credit, Darwin had to present an extract of his work to a scientific society in two weeks.
