Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Happy Darwin's Day
12th January, today, if you didn't already know is Charles Darwin's birthday, this year celebrating his 199th anniversary. What so significant about it?Charles Darwin had managed to unify all of biology with one of the most well established theory in Science, namely the theory of natural selection, that evolution is the non-random process of the selection of the random mutations of a gene (but what he once thought was the organism, because at that time no one new genetics). And from it not only do we derive principles in combating diseases, find ways to improve our crop, produce better domesticated plants and animals, etc... but most of all, it lets us understand the question of where life came from, that each living cell is a relative to each other, that all life lies on the branches of the same tree of life, and that we humans are but just one of all the wonderful species that have arisen from the blind mechanical (and metaphorical) hand of nature slowly and unwittingly tinkering with itself.
Some might say that this trivialise life, and makes life meaningless. On the other hand, as Darwin so eloquently sums up when he concluded his book, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
And now for some of the e-cards I received: (Ok, so I didn't really get any cards, these are just some of those being shared among the scientific community.)
That small dot being circled is Earth, in case you didn't know.
And also, if you hadn't figured this out after reading the whole post, next year would be Darwin's bicentennial, expect a bigger celebration in all scientific communities everywhere. In addition, Darwin published his book when he was 50, so it's also the 150th year of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection in 2009.
Now, evolve!
