Word: darwinism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Story of Charles Darwin is not to be found here*. That was written once and for all by his son. Its bare outline is sufficient for Author Bradford's purpose: born in 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln), son of a prosperous doctor, he attended Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, gave up tentative plans for medicine and the clergy, obtained the post of naturalist on the cruiser Beagle, was gone five years observing and exploring, married his cousin (one of the pottery Wedgwoods) in 1839, conceived the principle of evolution of species through natural selection the same year, fathered...
...Facets of Charles Darwin, mental, emotional, spiritual, are what this book contains...
...Discoverer. When Darwin had labored 20 years to support his theory, another man (Alfred Russel Wallace) appeared about to forestall him by announcing the same theory, with him a week old. Far from jealous or bitter, Darwin joined his announcement with Wallace's. They were warm friends. Darwin's point: the the ory outweighed its authors' feelings as the earth does a peanut...
...Loser. His lifelong application to biologic detail cost Darwin dear (suggests Author Bradford) in other fields of interest: in literature, history, politics; in esthetic enjoyment of nature; in religion. Some Catholics asked him what he was. "A sort of a Christian," he said. Habitually moral, gentle, tolerant, noble-minded, this was the truest answer, yet he regarded himself quite simply and scientifically as "differing" from faithful folk who "make themselves quite easy by intuition." He avoided cosmic thoughts, kept his writing purposely free from Pantheism, stuck to his species and specimens and "let God go" as imponderable. The Lover...
...Destroyer. This was the man who "slew God." This was the man who "typified the vigorous logic that wrecked the universe" for very sympathetic Author Bradford. The significance and explanation are: 1) that Darwin, saintliest of men, though he may have been the critical instrument and though he saw whither his brave thought tended, was yet no more responsible personally for the catastrophe than was many another honest thinker just before him-the German metaphysicians, Herbert Spencer, Poet Goethe, Poet Emerson; 2) that those for whom God is a necessity, as He was not for Darwin, will recreate...