Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This day February 12th is designated Darwin's Day. An 1868, the British naturalist Charles Darwin rented a cottage from by Julia Margaret Cameron, the famous Brish portraitist and then went to her chicken house to sit for his portrait and he paid her for it!. Darwin Day, an international celebration of science and humanity, is today,12th February and the Economist picture Desk, chose this picture for today's, picture of the day!
Julia Margaret Cameron: Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin is famous for his studies on the forms of life that evolve under environmental selective pressure, with survival of only the fittest in competition for resources, location and food.
Just in case you think that Darwin was some great genius, who thought up natural selection, it actually goes back to pre christian times to the time of the Greeks. This was already in the works of Epicurius but became known in the first century before Jesus, though the epic 6 part poem by Lucretius, from a privileged patrician family in Rome. Darwin's grandfather was already familiar with that latin poem! This argues that creatures do not arise de novo but instead compete and evolve over thousands of years with the strongest surviving. This poem was constantly being confiscated and destroyed by the church till it was lost altogether for 400 years. Then, in 1417, Poggio Bracciolini, a brilliant copyist, (who became free from work, as his employer, the current Pope got booted out of office! He had means now, and he devoted himself passionately to finding old documents. He re-discovered the last remaining copy of Lucretius' lost poem in a Gregorian Monastery. This one poem held the keys to understanding of chemical structure, of atoms and molecules and the nature of life and death and the universe. It reinvigorated scientific and philosophical thinking. It influenced Gallileo, atomists leading to the notion of modern chemistry and the infinite nature of the universe in which the earth was just a minor player.
So here's to Darwin for actually going out to document what Luctretius had advocated 500 years earlier!
"When Darwin was asked late in his life if he had ever read Lucretius, he stated to the incredulous questioner that he had not. But it is all there in Lucretius, whether Darwin had read it or not." Source. Well, by then Lucretius was already embedded in our culture and for sure, Darwin's grandfather knew about the poem and its implications.
So anyone with a brilliant idea has to know that there's a huge gap between brilliant thinking and then executing that idea! Everyone who nurtures an idea and helps sustain it is to be praised!
Asher
Julia Margaret Cameron: Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin is famous for his studies on the forms of life that evolve under environmental selective pressure, with survival of only the fittest in competition for resources, location and food.
Just in case you think that Darwin was some great genius, who thought up natural selection, it actually goes back to pre christian times to the time of the Greeks. This was already in the works of Epicurius but became known in the first century before Jesus, though the epic 6 part poem by Lucretius, from a privileged patrician family in Rome. Darwin's grandfather was already familiar with that latin poem! This argues that creatures do not arise de novo but instead compete and evolve over thousands of years with the strongest surviving. This poem was constantly being confiscated and destroyed by the church till it was lost altogether for 400 years. Then, in 1417, Poggio Bracciolini, a brilliant copyist, (who became free from work, as his employer, the current Pope got booted out of office! He had means now, and he devoted himself passionately to finding old documents. He re-discovered the last remaining copy of Lucretius' lost poem in a Gregorian Monastery. This one poem held the keys to understanding of chemical structure, of atoms and molecules and the nature of life and death and the universe. It reinvigorated scientific and philosophical thinking. It influenced Gallileo, atomists leading to the notion of modern chemistry and the infinite nature of the universe in which the earth was just a minor player.
So here's to Darwin for actually going out to document what Luctretius had advocated 500 years earlier!
"When Darwin was asked late in his life if he had ever read Lucretius, he stated to the incredulous questioner that he had not. But it is all there in Lucretius, whether Darwin had read it or not." Source. Well, by then Lucretius was already embedded in our culture and for sure, Darwin's grandfather knew about the poem and its implications.
So anyone with a brilliant idea has to know that there's a huge gap between brilliant thinking and then executing that idea! Everyone who nurtures an idea and helps sustain it is to be praised!
Asher