Word: darwinism
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...great English naturalist Charles Darwin made "survival of the fittest" part of the language. He also gave his name to the remote capital of Australia's tropical Northern Territory, and all too often the city of Darwin has been subjected to the harsh and literal testing of that phrase. In 1897, a cyclone leveled the cliff-perched port town, killing 28 of its residents. In 1937, it was flattened by another tropical storm. Five years later, Japanese Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, blasted the city with 188 bombers, killing 243 people and wounding...
...Force Squadron Leader Dr. Phillip Brownlie, one of the first physicians on the scene, said the victims had "abdominal injuries, head injuries, ruptured spleens, broken femurs and lacerated chests. Most of the injuries were caused by flying roofs, iron and timber. Darwin is gone. There's nothing left but rubble." Among the survivors were Steve Albanis, his wife Carol and their son, Damien, 2½, who outlasted the storm by huddling inside a deep freezer with 18-in. walls. Geoff James and his wife Barbara clung to their front fence for four hours; when the wind changed, they climbed...
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam flew home from London, cutting short a European tour, to oversee the most massive rescue operation in Australia's history. Darwin is the continent's most isolated city: almost 2,000 miles from the nearest metropolis, with no rail link to the rest of Australia and only one paved road through the outback. Navy units were immediately dispatched from Sydney with emergency supplies, but it will take them a week to complete the 2,500-mile voyage. Meanwhile, air force planes, commercial airlines and private jets donated by several Australian companies were airlifting...
Some of this seems more than faintly reminiscent of the '20s, when William Jennings Bryan faced Clarence Darrow to prosecute Darwin's evolutionary theories in the Scopes "monkey trial." What is the reason for the revival today of such fierce fundamentalism? Perhaps the cause is an increased need for spiritual security in a troubled world. It may also derive from the current distrust of science and disillusionment with rationalism. This mood may account, too, for the Bible's growing popularity among people of all spiritual stripes?or none at all. Translated into 1,526 languages, it is being bought...
...long, affectionately detailed biography notwithstanding. A man whose 69 years spanned and made the most of a number of literary and intellectual styles, Huxley simply does not fit comfortably into critical readymades. He was born to England's intellectual aristocracy. Thomas Henry Huxley, the great biologist and proselytizer of Darwin's theories of evolution, was his grandfather. Poet Matthew Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, was his mother's uncle. On one side, the traditions of scientific humanism; on the other, the melancholy ironist and culture critic who foreshadowed his grandnephew's own tussles with cynicism and faith. Aldous...