Word: darwins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
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...
Father, however, is a scientist, a student of Darwin. He resolves to raise the boy to be a natural man, with the skills and wiles of an animal. As he grows (he is portrayed at an older age by John David Carson), he proves to be more unfettered by convention than Father might have liked. As his mother comments, in what may be the worst single line of dialogue so far this year, "What we've got is a lusting male." Nothing will do but that Junior must have...
Adaptation, you understand, is a natural process, or so said Darwin. It simply happens. Awareness of adjustment facilitates comfort, but introspection can destroy. So be careful. It all boils down to Survival of the Fittest. And fitness at Harvard necessitates pain--lots...