Charles Darwin's Reception in Germany and What Followed.

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Axel Meyer

2009-07-01

Full Text Available 150 years ago, Heinrich Bronn provided in the first German translation of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species a rather liberal interpretation, even adding his own view of Darwin's ideas in an additional 15th chapter. Ernst Haeckel widely popularized his view of Darwinian evolution based on his reading of this translation. This was long seen - probably incorrectly - as the intellectual root of social Darwinism in Germany.

Environmental Education in the Galapagos: 2007 Report to the Charles Darwin Foundation

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Stepath, Carl M.

2007-01-01

Background: "Environmental education in the Galapagos: 2007 report to the Charles Darwin Foundation" is a report to the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) about the researchers observations about the status of environmental education in the Galapagos in 2006 and 2007. Purpose: This paper reports on environmental education in the Galapagos…

Charles Darwin havde et nuanceret syn på dyreforsøg

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Alstrup, Aage Kristian Olsen

2015-01-01

Jeg har i en tidligere blog været inde på, hvordan Charles Darwins evolutionsteori har haft betydning for vores valg af forsøgsdyr. Men hvordan så Charles Darwin egentlig selv på dyreforsøg og dyrevelfærd? Faktisk var det et emne, der optog ham dybt. Allerede i 1838, over tyve år før...... offentliggørelsen af Arternes Oprindelse, gjorde han sig et notat om, at mennesket i sin arrogance føler sig hævet over andre skabninger, men at det snarere bør opfatte sig som skabt ud fra dyrene. Disse tanker kom dog først for alvor frem, da Charles Darwin i 1871 offentliggjorde bogen Menneskets Afstamning...

Did Jean François Barbe Anticipate Charles Darwin?

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Drouin, Anne-Sophie; Drouin, Emmanuel; Pereon, Yann

2016-12-01

The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 is widely suppose to have initiated a revolution in science. In 1837, he broke with dogmatic fixism and argued that the adaptation of populations to their local environment was the cause of transmutation. Some contributors helped him start his reasoning: he indeed expressed his indebtedness to Samuel Rowley for having called his attention to Charles Wells' notions of natural selection. Darwin was certainly not the first to suggest the idea of evolution as an alternative to the creation of species by God. We report on a medical thesis published in 1837 being concluded by an unexpected and important statement related to the appearance of mammals on Earth. It remained unknown but it constitutes a link between the transformative thought of Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, and Darwin's work.

The Voyage of the Beagle: Field Work Lessons from Charles Darwin.

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Smith, Louis M.

1987-01-01

Analyzes Charles Darwin's letters to his family during his voyage on H.M.S. Beagle. Relates the information to the development of Darwin's professional identity and the degree to which the concepts, field methods, and research methods revealed in Darwin's personal correspondence are useful to students of educational administration. (MD)

Bravo Emma! Music in the life and work of Charles Darwin.

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Derry, J F

2009-03-01

The long-term marital dance of Emma and Charles Darwin was set to the routine beat of an almost daily piano recital. Emma was a proficient pianist, and so a quality instrument was a welcome and appropriate house-warming present for their first marital home in London. That same piano accompanied the Darwins on their move to Downe before being upgraded for a newer model, which is still there, whilst another, cheaper piano may have played in Charles Darwin's work, particularly on earthworms. Whilst he lamented his own lack of musicality, Darwin revelled in his wife's prowess, a capacity that he recognised could be inherited, not least through observation of his own children. The evolution of musicality, he reasoned, was rooted in sexual attraction as a form of communication that preceded language.

Creative Work: The Case of Charles Darwin.

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Gruber, Howard E.; Wallace, Doris B.

2001-01-01

Describes the evolving systems approach (ESA) to creative work, which emerged from a case study of Charles Darwin. Explains how the ESA differs from other approaches and describes various facets of creative work (networks of enterprise, uniqueness, insight, pluralism, and evolving belief systems and ensembles of metaphor). Emphasizes the…

Charles Darwin and the origin of life.

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Peretó, Juli; Bada, Jeffrey L; Lazcano, Antonio

2009-10-01

When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species 150 years ago he consciously avoided discussing the origin of life. However, analysis of some other texts written by Darwin, and of the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. As shown by notes from the pages he excised from his private notebooks, as early as 1837 Darwin was convinced that "the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable". Like many of his contemporaries, Darwin rejected the idea that putrefaction of preexisting organic compounds could lead to the appearance of organisms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that at the time it was possible to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life.

Scientific Cousins: The Relationship between Charles Darwin and Francis Galton

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Fancher, Raymond E.

2009-01-01

This article traces the personal as well as the intellectual and scientific relationship between Charles Darwin and his younger half-cousin Francis Galton. Although they had been on friendly terms as young men, and Darwin had in some ways been a role model for Galton, the two did not share major scientific interests until after the publication of…

John Tweedie and Charles Darwin in Buenos Aires.

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Ollerton, Jeff; Chancellor, Gordon; van Wyhe, John

2012-06-20

The journey of exploration undertaken by Charles Darwin FRS during the voyage of HMS Beagle has a central place within the historical development of evolutionary theory and has been intensively studied. Despite this, new facts continue to emerge about some of the details of Darwin's activities. Drawing on recently published Darwin material and unpublished letters in the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, we document a hitherto unexamined link between Darwin and John Tweedie (1775-1862), a relatively obscure Scottish gardener turned South American plant collector. All of the available evidence points to a meeting between the two men in Buenos Aires in 1832. Tweedie provided Darwin with information about the geography of the Rio Paraná, including the locality of fossilized wood eroding from the river bank. It also seems likely that Tweedie supplied Darwin with seeds that he later shipped back to John Stevens Henslow in Cambridge. Although this brief meeting was at the time relatively unimportant to either man, echoes of that encounter have resonated with Tweedie's descendants to the present day and have formed the basis for a family story about a written correspondence between Darwin and Tweedie. Local information supplied to Darwin by residents such as Tweedie was clearly important and deserves further attention.

An appreciation of Christiane Groehen: the correspondence between Charles Darwin and Anton Dohrn.

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Browne, Janet

2015-01-01

Anton Dohrn was introduced to Darwinism by Ernst Haeckel during his student years at Jena, and became an eager disciple of Charles Darwin's work. He founded the Stazione Zoologica in 1872. Darwin became a patron of Dohrn's Stazione, and the two naturalists corresponded regularly. This article discusses their relationship and the contributions of Christiane Groeben to its elucidation.

CHARLES R. DARWIN Y EL DESARROLLO DE LA CREATIVIDAD (

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Miranda Garnier Ximena

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Resumen:Los 200 años del nacimiento de Charles R. Darwin y los 150 años de la publicación de su libro “El origen de las especies” recuerdan la importancia de la creatividad y de comprender cómo se desarrolla. En este ensayo, analizo la autobiografía de Charles Darwin y concluyo que la creatividad en su vida surgió por interacción entre cualidades personales y una serie de circunstancias. En el análisis, sobresalen elementos que incluyen curiosidad, crecer cerca de la naturaleza, gusto por la lectura y el aprendizaje autónomo, la presencia de buenos mentores, disciplina, experiencia en los métodos de trabajo científico, disposición para establecer una red de científicos, y pasión por lo que se hace. Estos fueron elementos clave para su impacto en biología, geología, psicología, filosofía e incluso en nuestra percepción general del mundo. Se hacen reflexiones para educadores con la intención de promover el desarrollo de la creatividad en nuestros niños, niñas y jóvenes.Abstract:The 200th anniversary of Charles R. Darwin´s birth and the 150th of the publication of his “Origin of Species” remind us of the importance of creativity, and of understanding its development. In this essay, I analyze the autobiography of Charles Darwin and conclude that his creativity resulted from a series of personal qualities and circumstances. The key elements I found include curiosity, growing near nature, passion for reading and for autonomous learning, the role of good mentors, discipline, a disposition to establish a network with other scientists, experience with scientific methods, and passion for what he did. The presence of these elements in his life resulted in his transforming biology, geology, psychology, philosophy, and even our general perception of the world. Reflections for educators are presented with the intention of promoting the development of creativity in our children and youth.

The curious case of charles darwin and homeopathy.

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Ullman, Dana

2010-03-01

In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2-12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was 'going the way of all flesh'. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin's sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but 'goes much deeper.'

The Curious Case of Charles Darwin and Homeopathy

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Dana Ullman

2010-01-01

Full Text Available In 1849, Charles Darwin was so ill that he was unable to work one out of every 3 days, and after having various troubling symptoms for 2–12 years, he wrote to a friend that he was ‘going the way of all flesh’. He sought treatment from Dr James Manby Gully, a medical doctor who used water cure and homeopathic medicines. Despite being highly skeptical of these treatments, he experienced a dramatic improvement in his health, though some of his digestive and skin symptoms returned various times in his life. He grew to appreciate water cure, but remained skeptical of homeopathy, even though his own experiments on insectivore plants using what can be described as homeopathic doses of ammonia salts surprised and shocked him with their significant biological effect. Darwin even expressed concern that he should publish these results. Two of Darwin's sons were as incredulous as he was, but their observations confirmed the results of his experiments. Darwin was also known to have read a book on evolution written by a homeopathic physician that Darwin described as similar to his own but ‘goes much deeper.’

Discovery of scientific correspondence of P.P.C. Hoek (1851—1914), including three unpublished letters by Charles Darwin

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Pieters, Florence F.J.M.; Winthagen, Diny

1990-01-01

Recently the scientific correspondence of the Dutch zoologist P.P.C. Hoek (1851—1914) turned up in the Artis Library. This collection contains three hitherto unpublished letters from Charles Darwin. It appears that Charles Darwin recommended Hoek to the favour of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson upon

Could Charles Darwin Teach Psychology in the 1980s?

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Rigby, Marilyn K.

1988-01-01

Discusses the implications of Charles Darwin's personal and professional history for an academic career in psychology. Relationships between his theoretical position and the content of an introductory psychology course he might teach and how he might fare in a contemporary academic environment are sketched in this fictionalized account.…

The many lives of Charles Darwin: early biographies and the definitive evolutionist.

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Lightman, Bernard

2010-12-20

This article focuses on the early book-length biographies of Darwin published from his death in 1882 up to 1900. By making 1900 the cutoff point I can examine the biographies produced when the iconic figure was not yet set in stone, and before the rediscovery of Mendel's work in the early twentieth century and the anniversary celebrations of 1909 changed the way in which Darwin was regarded. Darwin's biographers dealt with three major themes. First, several biographers emphasized his scientific abilities, in particular his powers of observation and his prowess in conducting experiments. Second, many biographers discussed his character, a key issue in determining whether or not he could be trusted as a scientific guide. Finally, his scientific theories and religious beliefs, and how they related to the evolutionary controversy, formed a topic taken up by most biographers. By focusing on these three themes, the biographies published before 1900 were important in shaping the image of Darwin that was forming in American and British culture.

Darwin and Teacher: An Analysis of the Mentorship between Charles Darwin and Professor John Henslow.

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McGreevy, Ann

1990-01-01

The paper examines the mentorship between Charles Darwin and his teacher, John Stevens Henslow of Cambridge University (England). The importance of a mentor in stimulating creative productivity is demonstrated through discussion of their teaching and learning styles, their interests, their time spent together, and Henslow's character traits.…

CHARLES DARWIN: INMORTALIZADO EN EPÓNIMOS DE GEA, FLORA Y FAUNA RECIENTES DE CHILE

OpenAIRE

Pérez, Vicente

2009-01-01

Se presentan epónimos de gea, flora y fauna de Chile, erigidos en honor de Charles Darwin, naturalista a bordo del H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836), para denominar accidentes geográficos de territorio chileno y nuevas especies de flora y fauna descritas de ejemplares recolectados en Chile por él. Eponyms of gea, flora and fauna, erected in honour of Charles Darwin, naturalist on board of the H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836), for desígnate geographic accidents and new species of flora and fauna described...

Charles Darwin: um observador do desenvolvimento humano

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Eloisa Helena Rubello Valler Celeri

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Os autores traduzem, pela primeira vez para o português, o artigo de Charles Darwin "A Biographical Sketch of an Infant", publicado no periódico Mind em julho de 1877. Utilizando anotações de observações do desenvolvimento de seus filhos, especialmente de seu filho mais velho William Erasmus (Doddy, Darwin descreve e estuda, a partir de seu enfoque naturalista, o filhote humano, narrando os primeiros indicativos comportamentais de emoções tais como raiva e medo, curiosidade e senso moral, o brincar e o prazer envolvido nesta atividade, a capacidade de imitação e os primeiros indícios daquilo que hoje conhecemos como "teoria da mente". Colocando-se questões sobre as capacidades do bebê, como eles aprendem e como se comunicam e levantando hipóteses sobre possíveis significados de certos comportamentos, questões ainda hoje fundamentais para o estudo do desenvolvimento humano, Darwin mostra-se também um pioneiro no estudo do bebê e da criança pequena, numa época na qual as capacidades dos bebês eram extremamente subestimadas e desconsideradas.

The teacher taught? What Charles Darwin owed to John Lubbock

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Pearn, Alison

2014-01-01

The period around the publication of John Lubbock's Origin of civilisation in 1870 and Charles Darwin's Descent of man and selection in relation to sex the following year is key to a re-evaluation of the relationship between the two men, usually characterized as that of pupil and master. It is in the making of Descent that Lubbock's role as a scientific collaborator is most easily discerned, a role best understood within the social and political context of the time. Lubbock made Darwin—both the man and his science—acceptable and respectable. Less obvious is Darwin's conscious cultivation of Lubbock's patronage in both his private and public life, and Lubbock's equally conscious bestowal, culminating in his role in Darwin's burial in Westminster Abbey.

Correspondence of Charles Darwin on James Torbitt's project to breed blight-resistance potatoes.

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DeArce, M

2008-01-01

The most prolific of Darwin's correspondents from Ireland was James Torbitt, an enterprising grocer and wine merchant of 58 North Street, Belfast. Between February 1876 and March 1882, 141 letters were exchanged on the feasibility and ways of supporting one of Torbitt's commercial projects, the large-scale production and distribution of true potato seeds (Solan um tuberosum) to produce plants resistant to the late blight fungus Phytophthora infestans, the cause of repeated potato crop failures and thus the Irish famines in the nineteenth century. Ninety-three of these letters were exchanged between Torbitt and Darwin, and 48 between Darwin and third parties, seeking or offering help and advice on the project. Torbitt's project required selecting the small proportion of plants in an infested field that survived the infection, and using those as parents to produce seeds. This was a direct application of Darwin's principle of selection. Darwin cautiously lobbied high-ranking civil servants in London to obtain government funding for the project, and also provided his own personal financial support to Torbit.

Evolutionary plant physiology: Charles Darwin's forgotten synthesis.

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Kutschera, Ulrich; Niklas, Karl J

2009-11-01

Charles Darwin dedicated more than 20 years of his life to a variety of investigations on higher plants (angiosperms). It has been implicitly assumed that these studies in the fields of descriptive botany and experimental plant physiology were carried out to corroborate his principle of descent with modification. However, Darwin's son Francis, who was a professional plant biologist, pointed out that the interests of his father were both of a physiological and an evolutionary nature. In this article, we describe Darwin's work on the physiology of higher plants from a modern perspective, with reference to the following topics: circumnutations, tropisms and the endogenous oscillator model; the evolutionary patterns of auxin action; the root-brain hypothesis; phloem structure and photosynthesis research; endosymbioses and growth-promoting bacteria; photomorphogenesis and phenotypic plasticity; basal metabolic rate, the Pfeffer-Kleiber relationship and metabolic optimality theory with respect to adaptive evolution; and developmental constraints versus functional equivalence in relationship to directional natural selection. Based on a review of these various fields of inquiry, we deduce the existence of a Darwinian (evolutionary) approach to plant physiology and define this emerging scientific discipline as the experimental study and theoretical analysis of the functions of green, sessile organisms from a phylogenetic perspective.

Charles Robert Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: their dispute over the units of selection.

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Ruse, Michael

2013-12-01

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently discovered the mechanism of natural selection for evolutionary change. However, they viewed the working of selection differently. For Darwin, selection was always focused on the benefit for the individual. For Wallace, selection was as much something of benefit for the group as for the individual. This difference is traced to their different background political-economic views, with Darwin in favor of Adam Smith's view of society and Wallace following Robert Owen in being a socialist.

Charles Darwin: His Life, Journeys and Discoveries. A Teacher's Guide.

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Overy, Caroline

This handbook aims to: (1) introduce teachers and pupils to Charles Darwin, his life and work at Down House, his voyage on the Beagle, and his evolutionary theory; (2) set his ideas within the wider context of the 19th century; (3) link the subject areas to the British National Curriculum, particularly in history, science, and English at various…

Vom Milch trinkenden Sonnentau (Drosera spec.) zum schlafenden Wassersalat (Pistia spec.): Charles Darwin als Botaniker

OpenAIRE

Rutishauser, R

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin wird oft nur mit der Evolutionstheorie in Verbindung gebracht. Die vorliegende Arbeit betont Darwins Verdienste bei der Erforschung von Pflanzen. Seine Beobachtungsgabe verbunden mit experimentellem Geschick verhalfen Darwin zu botanischen Entdeckungen, für die wir ihn am 200. Geburtstag ebenso ehren sollten wie für seine mit natürlicher und sexueller Selektion verbundene Evolutionstheorie. Für die Pflanzenzüchtung und damit für die Evolution bedeutsa...

The paradoxical advantages and disadvantages of natural selection: the case history of Charles Darwin.

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Lieb, J

2007-01-01

The biology of natural selection is an enduring mystery, as is the nature of Charles Darwin's chronic illness. Of the theories advanced to explain the latter, Oedipal conflicts and Chagas' disease are preeminent. Hypomania, however, propelled Darwin to the pinnacle of scientific achievement and good health, the depression that followed condemning him to intellectual stagnation, lethargy, impaired memory and concentration, and incapacitating gastrointestinal disorders. Examples of natural selection in humans are much sought after when, ironically, one need look no further than Darwin himself.

CHARLES R. DARWIN Y EL DESARROLLO DE LA CREATIVIDAD

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Ximena Miranda Garnier

2010-01-01

Full Text Available Los 200 años del nacimiento de Charles R. Darwin y los 150 años de la publicación de su libro "El origen de las especies" recuerdan la importancia de la creatividad y de comprender cómo se desarrolla. En este ensayo, analizo la autobiografía de Charles Darwin y concluyo que la creatividad en su vida surgió por interacción entre cualidades personales y una serie de circunstancias. En el análisis, sobresalen elementos que incluyen curiosidad, crecer cerca de la naturaleza, gusto por la lectura y el aprendizaje autónomo, la presencia de buenos mentores, disciplina, experiencia en los métodos de trabajo científico, disposición para establecer una red de científicos, y pasión por lo que se hace. Estos fueron elementos clave para su impacto en biología, geología, psicología, filosofía e incluso en nuestra percepción general del mundo. Se hacen reflexiones para educadores con la intención de promover el desarrollo de la creatividad en nuestros niños, niñas y jóvenes.

Creative work. The case of Charles Darwin.

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Gruber, H E; Wallace, D B

2001-04-01

The evolving systems approach (ESA) addresses the need for direct study of the creative process in recognized creators at work, in contrast to indirect methods, such as those used in psychometric studies. The ESA emerged from H. E. Gruber's prolonged study of Charles Darwin's manuscripts, especially the notebooks he kept after the Beagle voyage. Gruber's interviews with J. Piaget about the latter's creative processes, as well as many doctoral dissertations, also helped shape the authors' approach. Using Gruber's (1974/1981) study of Darwin, the authors describe some facets of creative work identified in the course of their work. Among these are networks of enterprise, ensembles of metaphors, insights, and evolving belief systems. Although the ESA emphasizes cognitive processes, social, affective, and esthetic aspects of the case are not neglected. Each creative case is unique, otherwise the individual would not meet the criterion of originality. Uniqueness does not mean isolation; people who differ must and do work together. The integration of all these facets into a plausible system for each creator remains the authors' central task.

Charles Darwin and the 1835 earthquake at Concepcion, Chile

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Spall, H.

1981-01-01

On a stormy night in October 1836, H.M.S Beagle hove to and dropped anchor at Falmouth, a remote harbor in southwest England. Charles Darwin, the ship's naturalist, came ashore to take the mail coach to Shrewsbury. This was inauspicious end to an epic 5-year voyage around the coast of South America, the results of which were to have a tumultuous impact on scientific thought that has lasted to this day. 

'This excellent observer ...': the correspondence between Charles Darwin and James Crichton-Browne, 1869-75.

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Pearn, Alison M

2010-06-01

Between May 1869 and December 1875, Charles Darwin exchanged more than 40 letters with James Crichton-Browne, superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire. This paper charts their relationship within the context of Darwin's wider research networks and methods; it analyses the contribution that Crichton-Browne made to the writing of Expression, arguing that the information he provided materially affected Darwin's thesis, and that it was partly the need to assimilate this that led Darwin to publish Expression separately from Descent. The letters help to reconstruct Crichton-Browne's early research interests, and document Darwin's little-explored role as a patron. Both men are revealed within a collaborative scientific network, with each of them at various times a beneficiary or a promoter.

Ciência e educação: a propósito do bicentenário do nascimento de Charles Darwin Science and education: about Charles Darwin's 200th birthday

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Angel Pino

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Este artigo visa à evocação da memória do grande naturalista e cientista britânico Charles Darwin no bicentenário do seu nascimento. A melhor maneira de evocar sua memória é trazer à reflexão dos leitores as ideias de suas três obras maiores: A origem das espécies (1859, A descendência do homem (1871 e A expressão das emoções no homem e nos animais (1872. Após apresentar a importância e a oportunidade de Darwin no debate contemporâneo, o texto inicia com uma rápida referência aos antecedentes históricos da "teoria da evolução" e às reações que ela produz. Na sequência, a obra de Darwin é situada no contexto histórico da sua época. Apresenta-se também um breve histórico das três obras maiores e uma análise das suas principais ideias. Conclui-se o texto com uma indicação sumária de algumas questões que as ideias de Darwin colocam à ciência contemporânea e, em especial, à reflexão no campo da Educação.This paper evokes the memory of the British naturalist and scientist, Charles Darwin on his 200th birthday. The best way to do so is to invite our readers to reflect on some ideas of three books of his: The origin of species (1859, Descent of man (1871 and The expression of emotions in man and animals (1872. After presenting the importance and appropriateness of Darwin in the contemporaneous debate, the text rapidly explores the historical precedents of the so called "theory of evolution" and the reactions to it. It then situates Darwin's works in its historical context and presents a brief history of these three books and an analysis of their main ideas. As a conclusion, it summarizes how Darwin's ideas question contemporary science and, more particularly, the reflection in the field of education.

[Charles Robert Darwin: the great founder of scientific evolutionism].

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Liang, Qian-Jin; Bin, Jie; Zhang, Gen-Fa

2009-12-01

Today, we celebrated 200 years since Charles Darwin, one of the world's most creative and influential thinkers, was born. And there happens to be the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famous book, On the Origin of Species. It is verified that On the Origin of Species is an immortal classic book and is still guiding the study of anagenesis in life science as the development of natural science from then on, and even though most of the ideas in the book are well-known at the present age. In the article, we recall the brilliance and predomination life of Darwin, a great sage with rich scientific achievements, review briefly the novel discoveries and theories after him in the field, and then elucidate the focal points and perspectiveas in near future study of evolution.

Charles Darwin, beetles and phylogenetics.

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Beutel, Rolf G; Friedrich, Frank; Leschen, Richard A B

2009-11-01

Here, we review Charles Darwin's relation to beetles and developments in coleopteran systematics in the last two centuries. Darwin was an enthusiastic beetle collector. He used beetles to illustrate different evolutionary phenomena in his major works, and astonishingly, an entire sub-chapter is dedicated to beetles in "The Descent of Man". During his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin was impressed by the high diversity of beetles in the tropics, and he remarked that, to his surprise, the majority of species were small and inconspicuous. However, despite his obvious interest in the group, he did not get involved in beetle taxonomy, and his theoretical work had little immediate impact on beetle classification. The development of taxonomy and classification in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century was mainly characterised by the exploration of new character systems (e.g. larval features and wing venation). In the mid-twentieth century, Hennig's new methodology to group lineages by derived characters revolutionised systematics of Coleoptera and other organisms. As envisioned by Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, the new Hennigian approach enabled systematists to establish classifications truly reflecting evolution. Roy A. Crowson and Howard E. Hinton, who both made tremendous contributions to coleopterology, had an ambivalent attitude towards the Hennigian ideas. The Mickoleit school combined detailed anatomical work with a classical Hennigian character evaluation, with stepwise tree building, comparatively few characters and a priori polarity assessment without explicit use of the outgroup comparison method. The rise of cladistic methods in the 1970s had a strong impact on beetle systematics. Cladistic computer programs facilitated parsimony analyses of large data matrices, mostly morphological characters not requiring detailed anatomical investigations. Molecular studies on beetle phylogeny started in the 1990s with modest taxon sampling and limited DNA data. This has

An Artificial Neural Network-Based Decision-Support System for Integrated Network Security

Science.gov (United States)

2014-09-01

inbreeding, hybridization, or mutation, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in 1809 (Quammen, 2008). Within the field of CAS, emergent behavior...Enterprise. Upper Saddle River, NJ, USA: Prentice Hall. Quammen, D. (2008). Charles Darwin : On the Origin of Species The Illustrated Edition. New

Danes commemorating Darwin: apes and evolution at the 1909 anniversary.

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Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2010-10-01

This article analyses the Danish 1909 celebrations of the centenary of Charles Darwin's birth on 12 February 1809. I argue that the 1909 meetings, lectures and publications devoted to Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection can be characterised by ambivalence: on the one hand, tribute to a great man of science who established a new view of nature and, on the other hand, scepticism towards the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and the wider religious and political implications drawn from his theory. The article examines both professional and popular commemorative activities, focusing primarily on celebratory articles carried in widely circulated magazines and newspapers. I identify three types of interpretations of Darwin's ideas which I characterise as 'radical', 'evangelical' and 'safe' science. These different positions were closely linked to the political and cultural divisions of the periodical press. Moreover, my analysis of the popular press offers a solid basis for asserting that to most people Darwinism was associated with human evolution, primarily the relationship between man and apes, while more sophisticated discussions about the crisis of Darwinism prominent among naturalists played only a secondary role in the public arena. This article demonstrates the value of using newspapers as historical sources when looking for public images of Darwin, popular receptions of Darwinism and representations of science in general.

HENRY H. CHEEK AND TRANSFORMISM: NEW LIGHT ON CHARLES DARWIN'S EDINBURGH BACKGROUND.

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Jenkins, Bill

2015-06-20

Evidence for the transformist ideas espoused by Henry H. Cheek (1807-33), a contemporary of Charles Darwin's at the University of Edinburgh, sheds new light on the intellectual environment of Edinburgh in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Cheek was the author of several papers dealing with the transmutation of species influenced by the theories of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) and the Comte de Buffon (1707-88). Some of these were read to student societies, others appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science, which Cheek edited between 1829 and 1831. His writings give us a valuable window onto some of the transformist theories that were circulating among Darwin's fellow medical students in the late 1820s, to which Darwin would have been exposed during his time in Edinburgh, and for which little other concrete evidence survives.

Charles Darwin's beagle voyage, fossil vertebrate succession, and "the gradual birth & death of species".

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Brinkman, Paul D

2010-01-01

The prevailing view among historians of science holds that Charles Darwin became a convinced transmutationist only in the early spring of 1837, after his Beagle collections had been examined by expert British naturalists. With respect to the fossil vertebrate evidence, some historians believe that Darwin was incapable of seeing or understanding the transmutationist implications of his specimens without the help of Richard Owen. There is ample evidence, however, that he clearly recognized the similarities between several of the fossil vertebrates he collected and some of the extant fauna of South America before he returned to Britain. These comparisons, recorded in his correspondence, his diary and his notebooks during the voyage, were instances of a phenomenon that he later called the "law of the succession of types." Moreover, on the Beagle, he was following a geological research agenda outlined in the second volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which implies that paleontological data alone could provide an insight into the laws which govern the appearance of new species. Since Darwin claims in On the Origin of Species that fossil vertebrate succession was one of the key lines of evidence that led him to question the fixity of species, it seems certain that he was seriously contemplating transmutation during the Beagle voyage. If so, historians of science need to reconsider both the role of Britain's expert naturalists and the importance of the fossil vertebrate evidence in the development of Darwin's ideas on transmutation.

A strange horn between Paolo Mantegazza and Charles Darwin.

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Garbarino, Carla; Mazzarello, Paolo

2013-09-01

During the preparation of an exhibition in Pavia dedicated to the centennial anniversary of the death of the Italian Pathologist Paolo Mantegazza, a strange cheratinic horn was found at the Museum for the History of the University of Pavia labelled as 'spur of a cock transplanted into an ear of a cow.' After some historical investigation, we found this strange object was at the centre of a scientific correspondence between Mantegazza and Charles Darwin, who made reference to it in his book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin's Other Bulldog: Charles Kingsley and the Popularisation of Evolution in Victorian England

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Hale, Piers J.

2012-01-01

The nineteenth-century Anglican Priest Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was a significant populariser of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Kingsley was successful in this regard because he developed such diverse connections throughout his career. In the 1840s he associated with Chartists and radical journalists; in the 1850s and 1860s…

Charles Darwin's earthquake reports

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Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

As it is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, 2009 has also been marked as 170 years since the publication of his book Journal of Researches. During the voyage Darwin landed at Valdivia and Concepcion, Chile, just before, during, and after a great earthquake, which demolished hundreds of buildings, killing and injuring many people. Land was waved, lifted, and cracked, volcanoes awoke and giant ocean waves attacked the coast. Darwin was the first geologist to observe and describe the effects of the great earthquake during and immediately after. These effects sometimes repeated during severe earthquakes; but great earthquakes, like Chile 1835, and giant earthquakes, like Chile 1960, are rare and remain completely unpredictable. This is one of the few areas of science, where experts remain largely in the dark. Darwin suggested that the effects were a result of ‘ …the rending of strata, at a point not very deep below the surface of the earth…' and ‘…when the crust yields to the tension, caused by its gradual elevation, there is a jar at the moment of rupture, and a greater movement...'. Darwin formulated big ideas about the earth evolution and its dynamics. These ideas set the tone for the tectonic plate theory to come. However, the plate tectonics does not completely explain why earthquakes occur within plates. Darwin emphasised that there are different kinds of earthquakes ‘...I confine the foregoing observations to the earthquakes on the coast of South America, or to similar ones, which seem generally to have been accompanied by elevation of the land. But, as we know that subsidence has gone on in other quarters of the world, fissures must there have been formed, and therefore earthquakes...' (we cite the Darwin's sentences following researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). These thoughts agree with results of the last publications (see Nature 461, 870-872; 636-639 and 462, 42-43; 87-89). About 200 years ago Darwin gave oneself airs by the

Charles Darwin, beetles and phylogenetics

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Beutel, Rolf G.; Friedrich, Frank; Leschen, Richard A. B.

2009-11-01

Here, we review Charles Darwin’s relation to beetles and developments in coleopteran systematics in the last two centuries. Darwin was an enthusiastic beetle collector. He used beetles to illustrate different evolutionary phenomena in his major works, and astonishingly, an entire sub-chapter is dedicated to beetles in “The Descent of Man”. During his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin was impressed by the high diversity of beetles in the tropics, and he remarked that, to his surprise, the majority of species were small and inconspicuous. However, despite his obvious interest in the group, he did not get involved in beetle taxonomy, and his theoretical work had little immediate impact on beetle classification. The development of taxonomy and classification in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century was mainly characterised by the exploration of new character systems (e.g. larval features and wing venation). In the mid-twentieth century, Hennig’s new methodology to group lineages by derived characters revolutionised systematics of Coleoptera and other organisms. As envisioned by Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, the new Hennigian approach enabled systematists to establish classifications truly reflecting evolution. Roy A. Crowson and Howard E. Hinton, who both made tremendous contributions to coleopterology, had an ambivalent attitude towards the Hennigian ideas. The Mickoleit school combined detailed anatomical work with a classical Hennigian character evaluation, with stepwise tree building, comparatively few characters and a priori polarity assessment without explicit use of the outgroup comparison method. The rise of cladistic methods in the 1970s had a strong impact on beetle systematics. Cladistic computer programs facilitated parsimony analyses of large data matrices, mostly morphological characters not requiring detailed anatomical investigations. Molecular studies on beetle phylogeny started in the 1990s with modest taxon sampling and limited DNA data

Exploring the nature of science through courage and purpose: a case study of Charles Darwin's way of knowing.

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Cohen, Joel I

2016-01-01

In 1836, Charles Darwin returned to England with finches classified and seemingly showing little resemblance. However, subsequent examination by John Gould revealed 13 closely related species endemic to the Galápagos Islands. Despite initial confusion, and Darwin's overlooking to label these birds by island, some 100 years later they had become evolution's icon. The same could be said of Darwin's education and scientific pursuits, beginning in a rough, trial and error manner, lacking direction, but eventually benefitting from an unexpected opportunity that would lead to his theory of natural selection. This case study examines Darwin's way of learning and the reserve of courage and perseverance that he would need to see his treatise on evolution and natural selection published. To do this, themes from studying the "Nature of Science" are used to examine how Darwin's "way of knowing" advanced before and after his voyage upon HMS Beagle. Five themes from the "Nature of Science" were selected to illustrate Darwin's struggles and triumph: creating scientific knowledge is a human endeavor, such knowledge can explain an order and consistency in natural systems, knowledge comes from a scientist's way of knowing, is open to revision, and based on empirical evidence. The "Nature of Science" as applied to Charles Darwin is explored through the three above mentioned themes identified by the Next Generation Science Standards. Together, the themes help explain Darwin's way of knowing, from boyhood to manhood. This explanation helps humanize Darwin, allows students to see how he arrived at his theories, how the time taken to do so wore on his health and safety, and the risk Darwin had to weigh from their eventual publication. Each theme ends with a summary and related extension questions to draw students into the case, and facilitate inquiry. They relate Darwin's way of learning from the 1800s and his commitment to see his work published, to the learning environment of

O show de Darwin

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Steve Shapin

2010-07-01

Full Text Available As comemorações dos 200 anos de nascimento de Charles Darwin revelaram menos sobre a figura histórica do cientista vitoriano do que sobre o lugar da ciência e do cientista na cultura moderna. O artigo explora os eventos do "Dia de Darwin" e a produção recente sobre o "pai da teoria da evolução" com a intenção de ligá-los à recepção contemporânea da obra (e da figura de Charles Darwin.The celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth were less about the historical figure of the Victorian scientist than about the place of science and the scientist in modern culture. The article explores the "Darwin Day" events and recent books on the "father of the theory of evolution" in order to relate them to the contemporary reception of Darwin's life and work.

"A dedicated missionary". Charles Galton Darwin and the new quantum mechanics in Britain

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Navarro, Jaume

In this paper I discuss the work on quantum physics and wave mechanics by Charles Galton Darwin, a Cambridge wrangler of the last generation, as a case study to better understand the early reception of quantum physics in Britain. I argue that his proposal in the early 1920s to abandon the strict conservation of energy, as well as his enthusiastic embracement of wave mechanics at the end of the decade, can be easily understood by tracing his ontological and epistemological commitments to his early training in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. I also suggest that Darwin's work cannot be neglected in a study of quantum physics in Britain, since he was one of very few fellows of the Royal Society able to judge and explain quantum physics and quantum mechanics.

"My appointment received the sanction of the Admiralty": why Charles Darwin really was the naturalist on HMS Beagle.

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van Wyhe, John

2013-09-01

For decades historians of science and science writers in general have maintained that Charles Darwin was not the 'naturalist' or 'official naturalist' during the 1831-1836 surveying voyage of HMS Beagle but instead Captain Robert FitzRoy's 'companion', 'gentleman companion' or 'dining companion'. That is, Darwin was primarily the captain's social companion and only secondarily and unofficially naturalist. Instead, it is usually maintained, the ship's surgeon Robert McCormick was the official naturalist because this was the default or official practice at the time. Although these views have been repeated in countless accounts of Darwin's life, this essay aims to show that they are incorrect. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Die ‘vergroening’ van die Christelike godsdiens: Charles Darwin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin en Lloyd Geering

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Izak J.J. (Sakkie Spangenberg

2014-11-01

Full Text Available The greening of Christianity: Charles Darwin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Lloyd Geering. Since the time of Charles Darwin, evolutionary biology challenged the metanarrative of Christianity which can be summarised as Fall-Redemption-Judgement. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin tried to circumvent these challenges by integrating the traditional Christian doctrines with evolutionary biology. However, he did not succeed since the Catholic Church, time and again, vetoed his theological publications. A number of Protestant theologians promoted his views but even they could not convince ordinary Christians to accept his views. These were too esoteric for Christians. Most of them were convinced that the acceptance of the theory of evolution will eventually undermine their faith. In recent years Lloyd Geering argued a case for the creation of a new narrative in which the Big Bang and the theory of evolution do play a role. He calls it the ‘Greening of Christianity’. This article discusses the metanarrative of Christianity and the challenges the theory of evolution presents before it assesses the views of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Lloyd Geering.

Charles Darwin and the evolution of human grammatical systems.

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Buckingham, Hugh W; Christman, Sarah S

2010-04-08

Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories of animal communication were deeply embedded in a centuries-old model of association psychology, whose prodromes have most often been traced to the writings of Aristotle. His notions of frequency of occurrence of pairings have been passed down through the centuries and were a major ontological feature in the formation of associative connectivity. He focused on the associations of cause and effect, contiguity of sequential occurrence, and similarity among items. Cause and effect were often reduced to another type of contiguity relation, so that Aristotle is most often evoked as the originator of the associative bondings through similarity and contiguity, contiguity being the most powerful and frequent means of association. Contiguity eventually became the overriding mechanism for serial ordering of mental events in both perception and action. The notions of concatenation throughout the association psychology took the form of "trains" of events, both sensory and motor, in such a way that serial ordering came to be viewed as an item-by-item string of locally contiguous events. Modern developments in the mathematics of serial ordering have advanced in sophistication since the early and middle twentieth century, and new computational methods have allowed us to reevaluate the serial concatenative theories of Darwin and the associationists. These new models of serial order permit a closer comparative scrutiny between human and nonhuman. The present study considers Darwin's insistence on a "degree" continuity between human and nonhuman animal serial ordering. We will consider a study of starling birdsongs and whether the serial ordering of those songs provides evidence that they have a syntax that at best differs only in degree and not in kind with the computations of human grammatical structures. We will argue that they, in fact, show no such thing.

Cloud amount/frequency, NITRATE and other data from CHARLES DARWIN from 1987-11-13 to 1987-12-16 (NODC Accession 9000119)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) and other data were collected. R/V Charles Darwin was used to collect data. The data consisting of 111 casts was...

Darwin: German mystic or French rationalist?

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Ghiselin, Michael T

2015-01-01

The notion that Charles Darwin embraced the German Romantic tradition seems plausible, given the early influence of Alexander von Humboldt. But this view fails to do justice to other scientific traditions. Darwin was a protégé of the Englishman John Stevens Henslow and was a follower of the Scott Charles Lyell. He had important debts to French scientists, notably Henri Milne-Edwards, Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Alphonse de Candolle. Many Germans were quite supportive of Darwin, but not all of these were encumbered by idealistic metaphysical baggage. Both Darwin and Anton Dohrn treated science as very much a cosmopolitan enterprise.

Darwin i Danmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Klassiske danske oversættelser af Charles Darwins skrifter, bl.a. Om Arternes Oprindelse, Menneskets Afstamning, Rejse om Jorden og Live og Breve. Indeholder også forskellige 1800-tals reaktioner til Darwin sammen med en række introduktioner, bibliografier og andre ressourcer for studerende og...

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, directional selection, and the evolutionary sciences today.

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Kutschera, Ulrich

2009-11-01

The book On the Origin of Species, published in November 1859, is an "abstract" without references, compiled by Charles Darwin from a much longer manuscript entitled "Natural Selection." Here, I summarize the five theories that can be extracted from Darwin's monograph, explain the true meaning of the phrase "struggle for life" (i.e., competition and cooperation), and outline Darwin's original concept of natural selection in populations of animals and plants. Since neither Darwin nor Alfred R. Wallace distinguished between stabilizing and directional natural selection, the popular argument that "selection only eliminates but is not creative" is still alive today. However, I document that August Weismann (Die Bedeutung der sexuellen Fortpflanzung für die Selektions-Theorie. Gustav Fischer-Verlag, Jena, 1886) and Ivan Schmalhausen (Factors of evolution. The theory of stabilizing selection. The Blackiston Company, Philadelphia, 1949) provided precise definitions for directional (dynamic) selection in nature and illustrate this "Weismann-Schmalhausen principle" with respect to the evolutionary development of novel phenotypes. Then, the modern (synthetic) theory of biological evolution that is based on the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky (Genetics and the origin of species. Columbia University Press, New York, 1937) and others, and the expanded version of this system of theories, are outlined. Finally, I document that symbiogenesis (i.e., primary endosymbiosis, a process that gave rise to the first eukaryotic cells), ongoing directional natural selection, and the dynamic Earth (plate tectonics, i.e., geological events that both created and destroyed terrestrial and aquatic habitats) were the key processes responsible for the documented macroevolutionary patterns in all five kingdoms of life. Since the evolutionary development of the earliest archaic bacteria more than 3,500 mya, the biosphere of our dynamic planet has been dominated by prokaryotic microbes. Eubacteria

Evolutionary plant physiology: Charles Darwin's forgotten synthesis

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Kutschera, Ulrich; Niklas, Karl J.

2009-11-01

Charles Darwin dedicated more than 20 years of his life to a variety of investigations on higher plants (angiosperms). It has been implicitly assumed that these studies in the fields of descriptive botany and experimental plant physiology were carried out to corroborate his principle of descent with modification. However, Darwin’s son Francis, who was a professional plant biologist, pointed out that the interests of his father were both of a physiological and an evolutionary nature. In this article, we describe Darwin’s work on the physiology of higher plants from a modern perspective, with reference to the following topics: circumnutations, tropisms and the endogenous oscillator model; the evolutionary patterns of auxin action; the root-brain hypothesis; phloem structure and photosynthesis research; endosymbioses and growth-promoting bacteria; photomorphogenesis and phenotypic plasticity; basal metabolic rate, the Pfeffer-Kleiber relationship and metabolic optimality theory with respect to adaptive evolution; and developmental constraints versus functional equivalence in relationship to directional natural selection. Based on a review of these various fields of inquiry, we deduce the existence of a Darwinian (evolutionary) approach to plant physiology and define this emerging scientific discipline as the experimental study and theoretical analysis of the functions of green, sessile organisms from a phylogenetic perspective.

Beagle I and II Voyages: Charles Darwin's rocks and the quest for Mars rock; the Open University's virtual microscope has both

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Schwenzer, S. P.; Tindle, A. G.; Anand, M.; Gibson, E. K.; Pearson, V. K.; Pemberton, D.; Pillinger, C.; Smith, C. L.; Whalley, P.; Kelley, S. P.

2011-12-01

Exploration is in itself a fascinating subject, and a strong draw to engaging the public in understanding science. Nearly two hundred years ago Charles Darwin took part in an exploration of the Earth, and more recently we have begun to explore the solar system and in particular the surface of Mars. The engagement is made easier if an element of exploration is involved in the public engagement, using modern internet and even mobile technologies. The Open University combines all those aspects in a series of virtual microscopes for Earth science that are freely available on the web, installed in museums, or built into its teaching material. The basis of the virtual microscope is a mosaic of several hundred microscopic images of each thin section taken in plane polarised light, between crossed polars and in reflected light, which are then assembled into three high resolution images. Rotation movies for selected points in the thin section illustrate changing optical properties such as birefringence. The user is able to pan and zoom around to explore the section, studying the mineralogy and rock texture, and view the rotation movies linked to points in the section to see the changing birefringence colours. We have created several collections of terrestrial rocks, mainly for teaching purposes, and outreach directly linked to exploration: Charles Darwin returned from the Voyage of the Beagle with a large variety of rock samples, and although thin sections were not being made at that time, they were created from his rocks in the late 19th century. The historic material is part of the "Darwin the Geologist" exhibition at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge. Our Darwin virtual microscope includes hand specimen illustrations and thin sections together with documentation and an interactive map allow internet users and museum visitors alike to have a close look at Darwin's rocks and study the petrology of them. Charles Darwin explored distant horizons on Earth in the 19th century

Darwinian hydrology: can the methodology Charles Darwin pioneered help hydrologic science?

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Harman, C.; Troch, P. A.

2013-05-01

There have been repeated calls for a Darwinian approach to hydrologic science or for a synthesis of Darwinian and Newtonian approaches, to deepen understanding the hydrologic system in the larger landscape context, and so develop a better basis for predictions now and in an uncertain future. But what exactly makes a Darwinian approach to hydrology "Darwinian"? While there have now been a number of discussions of Darwinian approaches, many referencing Harte (2002), the term is potentially a source of confusion while its connections to Darwin remain allusive rather than explicit. Here we discuss the methods that Charles Darwin pioneered to understand a variety of complex systems in terms of their historical processes of change. We suggest that the Darwinian approach to hydrology follows his lead by focusing attention on the patterns of variation in populations, seeking hypotheses that explain these patterns in terms of the mechanisms and conditions that determine their historical development, using deduction and modeling to derive consequent hypotheses that follow from a proposed explanation, and critically testing these hypotheses against new observations. It is not sufficient to catalogue the patterns or predict them statistically. Nor is it sufficient for the explanations to amount to a "just-so" story not subject to critical analysis. Darwin's theories linked present-day variation to mechanisms that operated over history, and could be independently test and falsified by comparing new observations to the predictions of corollary hypotheses they generated. With a Darwinian framework in mind it is easy to see that a great deal of hydrologic research has already been done that contributes to a Darwinian hydrology - whether deliberately or not. The various heuristic methods that Darwin used to develop explanatory theories - extrapolating mechanisms, space for time substitution, and looking for signatures of history - have direct application in hydrologic science. Some

The Darwins and Wells: from revolution to evolution.

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Wade, Nicholas J

2010-04-08

In the biography of his grandfather (Erasmus Darwin), Charles Darwin hinted that his father (Robert Darwin) had received parental assistance in conducting and writing his medical thesis (which concerned afterimages). The experiments also involved visual vertigo, and they were elaborated by the senior Darwin in his Zoonomia, published in 1794. Erasmus Darwin's interpretation was in terms of trying to pursue peripheral afterimages formed during rotation; it was at variance with one published two years earlier by William Charles Wells, who had investigated the visual consequences of body rotation when the body is subsequently still. Wells penned two retorts to the Darwins' theory; although they were not accepted by Erasmus, he did devise a human centrifuge, models of which were employed in later studies of vertigo. Wells's ideas on evolution were expressed in a paper delivered to the Royal Society (in 1813) but not published in its Transactions. Commenting on the case of a white woman, part of whose skin was black, he proposed a process of change that was akin to natural selection. His ideas were acknowledged by Charles Darwin in the fourth edition of On the Origin of Species.

Darwin's legacy

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Susskind, Leonard

2009-07-01

Charles Darwin was no theoretical physicist, and I am no biologist. Yet, as a theoretical physicist, I have found much to think about in Darwin's legacy - and in that of his fellow naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace. Darwin's style of science is not usually thought of as theoretical and certainly not mathematical: he was a careful observer of nature, kept copious notes, contributed to zoological collections; and eventually from his vast repertoire of observation deduced the idea of natural selection as the origin of species. The value of theorizing is often dismissed in the biological sciences as less important than observation; and Darwin was the master observer.

WATER TEMPERATURE and other data from DISCOVERY, CHARLES DARWIN and other platforms from 1987-08-24 to 1992-11-02 (NODC Accession 9300124)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The water depth and temperature data were collected from ships CHARLES DARWIN, CLYDE-OWS LIMA, DISCOVERY, and OCEAN WEATHER STATION L between August 24 1987 and...

Commentary: Darwin at 200

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Brandt, Danita

2009-01-01

2009 marked the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12) and the 150th anniversary (in November) of the publication of Darwin's "extended abstract" "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection." Universities, scientific societies, and disciplinary journals anticipated this event by organizing meetings, theme…

3D-Reconstruction of recent volcanic activity from ROV-video, Charles Darwin Seamounts, Cape Verdes

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Kwasnitschka, T.; Hansteen, T. H.; Kutterolf, S.; Freundt, A.; Devey, C. W.

2011-12-01

As well as providing well-localized samples, Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) produce huge quantities of visual data whose potential for geological data mining has seldom if ever been fully realized. We present a new workflow to derive essential results of field geology such as quantitative stratigraphy and tectonic surveying from ROV-based photo and video material. We demonstrate the procedure on the Charles Darwin Seamounts, a field of small hot spot volcanoes recently identified at a depth of ca. 3500m southwest of the island of Santo Antao in the Cape Verdes. The Charles Darwin Seamounts feature a wide spectrum of volcanic edifices with forms suggestive of scoria cones, lava domes, tuff rings and maar-type depressions, all of comparable dimensions. These forms, coupled with the highly fragmented volcaniclastic samples recovered by dredging, motivated surveying parts of some edifices down to centimeter scale. ROV-based surveys yielded volcaniclastic samples of key structures linked by extensive coverage of stereoscopic photographs and high-resolution video. Based upon the latter, we present our workflow to derive three-dimensional models of outcrops from a single-camera video sequence, allowing quantitative measurements of fault orientation, bedding structure, grain size distribution and photo mosaicking within a geo-referenced framework. With this information we can identify episodes of repetitive eruptive activity at individual volcanic centers and see changes in eruptive style over time, which, despite their proximity to each other, is highly variable.

The Influence of Darwin on Evolutionary Algorithms from "Dinner with Darwin"

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Overbye, David L.

2009-01-01

The "Dinner with Darwin" event held at the National Association of Biology Teachers Conference over several successive years represented an innovative forum for exploring the ways that the work of Charles Darwin has had an impact in fields quite far removed from biology. Through a wide-ranging discussion by panel participants, drawn from a number…

El camarote de Darwin: un Club de Lectura para aprender sobre la vida de Charles Darwin y su teoría de la evolución

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Nicolás Cuvi

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Compartimos la experiencia y el análisis del Club de Lectura "El camarote de Darwin", realizado durante una semana en la isla Floreana, Galápagos, en un ámbito de educación no formal, para promover la alfabetización literaria y científica. Mezclamos la lectura del libro Darwin el viajero con actividades concretas de refuerzo, con el fin de cumplir con tres objetivos: divulgar la historia de Charles Darwin y su relación con Galápagos; familiarizar a los y las participantes con algunos aspectos de la teoría darwiniana de la evolución; y promover el hábito de la lectura y el gusto por los libros y las historias. Evaluamos el cumplimiento de estos objetivos mediante encuestas y observación, en las que incluimos preguntas sobre otros aspectos no considerados en los objetivos generales, como la relación entre ideas evolucionistas y creacionistas. Señalamos algunas modificaciones que requieren ser incorporadas en la actividad para ser replicada en otros contextos.

Charles Darwin's Theory of Moral Sentiments: What Darwin's Ethics Really Owes to Adam Smith.

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Priest, Greg

2017-01-01

When we read the Origin, we cannot help but hear echoes of the Wealth of Nations. Darwin's "economy of nature" features a "division of labour" that leads to complexity and productivity. We should not, however, analyze Darwin's ethics through this lens. Darwin did not draw his economic ideas from Smith, nor did he base his ethics on an economic foundation. Darwin's ethics rest on Smith's notion from the Theory of Moral Sentiments of an innate human faculty of sympathy. Darwin gave this faculty an evolutionary interpretation and built on this foundation an ethics far removed from what is commonly supposed.

The 'root-brain' hypothesis of Charles and Francis Darwin: Revival after more than 125 years.

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Baluska, Frantisek; Mancuso, Stefano; Volkmann, Dieter; Barlow, Peter W

2009-12-01

This year celebrates the 200(th) aniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, best known for his theory of evolution summarized in On the Origin of Species. Less well known is that, in the second half of his life, Darwin's major scientific focus turned towards plants. He wrote several books on plants, the next-to-last of which, The Power of Movement of Plants, published together with his son Francis, opened plants to a new view. Here we amplify the final sentence of this book in which the Darwins proposed that: "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed [with sensitivity] and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being seated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements." This sentence conveys two important messages: first, that the root apex may be considered to be a 'brain-like' organ endowed with a sensitivity which controls its navigation through soil; second, that the root apex represents the anterior end of the plant body. In this article, we discuss both these statements.

Ferdinand von Mueller's interactions with Charles Darwin and his response to Darwinism.

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Lucas, A M

2010-01-01

Although Ferdinand Mueller (later von Mueller), Government Botanist of Victoria, opposed Darwin's theories when "On the origin of species" was published, there has been little detailed study of the nature of Mueller's opposition from 1860, when he received a presentation copy of "Origin," to his death in 1896. Analysis of Mueller's correspondence and publications shows that he remained a theist and misunderstood key aspects of Darwin's theory. However, Mueller did come to accept that natural selection could operate within a species, although never accepting it could produce speciation. Despite these differences he retained a cordial relationship with Darwin.

Darwin the scientist.

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Browne, J

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin's experimental investigations show him to have been a superb practical researcher. These skills are often underestimated today when assessing Darwin's achievement in the Origin of Species and his other books. Supported by a private income, he turned his house and gardens into a Victorian equivalent of a modern research station. Darwin participated actively in the exchange of scientific information via letters and much of his research was also carried out through correspondence. Although this research was relatively small scale in practice, it was large scale in intellectual scope. Darwin felt he had a strong desire to understand or explain whatever he observed.

Race, Racism, and Darwinism

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Jeynes, William H.

2011-01-01

This article examines the views of Darwinist evolution on issues regarding race and how this contributed to the spread of racism in the United States. The writings of Charles Darwin and a myriad of his followers are examined, including Herbert Spencer, Francis Galton, and others. The influence of Darwinism in contributing to the growth of…

Nietzsche’s reception of Darwinism

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Mostert, Pieter

1979-01-01

It has been generally assumed that the influence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on Friedrich Nietzsche (1844- 1900) is to be understood in terms of Nietzsche's concept """"Obermensch"""" (overman). Hardly any attention has been paid to the question of the status of Darwin's theory in

Evolution in a fully constituted world: Charles Darwin's debts towards a static world in the Origin of Species (1859).

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Delisle, Richard G

2014-01-01

The Transformist Revolution was a long intellectual quest that has expanded from the 18th century to today. One area of inquiry after another has confronted the necessity of recasting its object of study under an evolutionary view: human history, geology, biology, astronomy, etc. No single scholar fully managed to make the transition from a static worldview to an evolutionary one during his or her own lifetime; Charles Darwin is no exception. Many versions of evolutionism were proposed during this revolution, versions offering all sorts of compromises between old and new views. Not sufficiently acknowledged in the historiography is the profoundness of Darwin's debts towards the old static view. As a dual child of the Scientific Revolution and natural theology, Darwin inherited key concepts such as stability, completeness, timelessness, unity, permanence, and uniformity. Darwin took these concepts into consideration while erecting his theory of biological evolution. Unsurprisingly, this theory was ill-equipped to embrace the directionality, historicity, and novelty that came along with a new evolutionary world. This paper analyses a fundamental idea at the heart of Darwin's Origins of Species (1859) inherited from a static, stable, and machine-like conception of the world: the notion of a fully constituted world. Although in principle antithetical to the very idea of evolution itself, Darwin found a way to 'loosen up' this notion so as to retain it in a way that allows for some kind of evolutionary change. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Charles Darwin and the problem of evolutionary progress].

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Iordanskiĭ, N N

2010-01-01

According to Ch. Darwin's evolutionary theory, evolutionary progress (interpreted as morpho-physiological progress or arogenesis in recent terminology) is one of logical results of natural selection. At the same time, natural selection does not hold any factors especially promoting evolutionary progress. Darwin emphasized that the pattern of evolutionary changes depends on organism nature more than on the pattern of environment changes. Arogenesis specificity is determined by organization of rigorous biological systems - integral organisms. Onward progressive development is determined by fundamental features of living organisms: metabolism and homeostasis. The concept of social Darwinism differs fundamentally from Darwin's ideas about the most important role of social instincts in progress of mankind. Competition and selection play secondary role in socio-cultural progress of human society.

Alfred Russel Wallace and the destruction of island life: the Iguana tragedy.

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Kutschera, Ulrich; Kleinhans, Simon

2013-12-01

The Galápagos Islands (Ecuador) are usually associated with the explorations and theoretical deductions of Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), but Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) also investigated these islands and published several reports on the living world of this unique archipelago. In contrast to Darwin, Wallace described the destruction of natural ecosystems by humans and foresaw the resulting extinction of species. Here, we outline two case studies pertinent to Wallace's prediction. First, we summarize the behavior of the predator-naive marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) on the Galápagos Islands, which are threatened by feral dogs and cats imported by humans. We also describe the unique life cycle of the spiny-tailed iguana (Ctenosaura bakeri) from the island of Utila (Honduras), a rare species whose populations are declining because of habitat destructions. In contrast to these threatened, endemic island species, the Green iguana (Iguana iguana) is still widely distributed, although, as a result of de-forestation, in some areas of South America local populations have disappeared. We conclude that Wallace was correct in his prediction that, because of human activities, numerous species of animals and plants will be driven to extinction, notably on islands.

Darwin in domineesland: een reconstructie van de wijze waarop geleerde Nederlanders Darwins evolutietheorie filosofisch beoordeelden, 1859-1877

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B. Leeuwenburgh (Bart)

2009-01-01

textabstractIn zijn proefschrift Darwin in domineesland geeft Bart Leeuwenburgh een overzicht van het debat dat in Nederland ontstond over de evolutietheorie, na de publicatie van Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species in 1859. Hierbij trekt een bonte stoet voorbij van bedaarde wetenschappers,

Charles Darwin in Australia; or How To Introduce Some Local Colour to the Teaching of Evolution, Geology, Meteorology, and the Determination of Longitude.

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Nicholas, Frank W.

The background to Charles Darwin's little-known visit to Australia, and the account of his experiences while here, provide some invaluable historical material for teaching evolution, geology, meteorology, and the determination of longitude. Indeed, by using his Australian experiences as a foundation, it is possible to explain the theory of…

CTD data from the Madeira and Iberian Abyssal Plains. CHARLES DARWIN cruises 3/85 and 9A/85

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Saunders, P.M.

1986-01-01

This report presents lists and graphs of CTD data taken aboard RRS Charles Darwin on cruises 3 (May 1985) and 9A (November 1985). The majority of the lowerings were made in support of two experiments; the deployment of deep SOFAR floats and of deep moored current meters, the latter near 31 0 30'N 25 0 W (GME site). All CTD data is compared with reversing thermometer observations, and with determinations of salinity and dissolved oxygen derived from samples. (author)

Darwin's Book: On the Origin of Species

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Hodge, Jonathan

2013-09-01

This essay is an interpretation of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. It focuses on the contents of the Origin as Darwin intended them to be understood and the background to the work, thus revealing the originality (or otherwise) of the work.

Studying phenotypic evolution in domestic animals: a walk in the footsteps of Charles Darwin.

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Andersson, L

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin used domesticated plants and animals as proof of principle for his theory on phenotypic evolution by means of natural selection. Inspired by Darwin's work, we developed an intercross between the wild boar and domestic pigs to study the genetic basis for phenotypic changes during domestication. The difference in coat color is controlled by two major loci. Dominant white color is due to two consecutive mutations in the KIT gene: a 450-kb duplication and a splice mutation. Black spotting is caused by the combined effect of two mutations in MC1R: a missense mutation for dominant black color and a 2-bp insertion leading to a frameshift. A major discovery made using this pedigree is the identification of a single-nucleotide substitution in intron 3 of the gene for insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) that is underlying a quantitative trait locus affecting muscle growth, size of the heart, and fat deposition. The mutation disrupts the interaction with a repressor and leads to threefold increased IGF2 expression in postnatal muscle. In a recent study, we have identified the IGF2 repressor, and this previously unknown protein, named ZBED6, is specific for placental mammals and derived from a domesticated DNA transposon.

Darwin taxonomist: Barnacles and shell burrowing barnacles Darwin taxónomo: cirrípedos y cirrípedos perforadores de conchas

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JUAN CARLOS CASTILLA

2009-12-01

Full Text Available This bibliographic review revisits circumstances in which the wharf, shell burrowing barnacle, Cryptophialus minutus, was first collected by Charles Darwin in southern Chile, in 1836. Further, explores how its collection marked Darwin's taxonomical interest in Cirripedia. A short review analyzes the initial number of extant species of Cirripedia, as described by Darwin and the present situation, with emphasis on recent collections of C. minutus in the southern tip of South America.Esta revisión bibliográfica describe las circunstancias en el que el cirrípedo enano, Crypophialus minutus, perforador de conchas, fue recolectado por Charles Darwin en el sur de Chile, en 1836. Además, cómo esta recolección marcó el interés taxonómico de Darwin en Cirripedia. Se presenta una revisión resumida sobre el número inicial de especies vivas de Cirripedia, como fueron descritas por Darwin, y la situación actual, con énfasis en recolecciones recientes de C. minutus en el cono sur de Suramérica.

Darwin endures, despite disparagement.

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Van Den Berg, Hugo A

2018-03-01

Evolution lies at the heart of the life sciences, and Charles Darwin is a towering historical figure within evolutionary science. One testimony to his lasting influence is that declaring Darwin to have been wrong all along remains a provocative way to command attention. The present paper discusses various strands of 'Darwin was wrong' partisans and their divergent views and motives: some are looking to Darwin to justify or condemn the political ideologies that they support or reject; others are concerned with the corrupting influence that the bleak cosmic outlook of evolution is deemed to exert on the moral or religious rectitude of impressionable minds, or regard Darwinism as a direct assault on religion; philosophers question the very coherence of the entire enterprise; and certain biologists aspire to go down in history as even greater than Darwin. It is sobering to reflect that this diverse group is united only by their poor grasp of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

More on Darwin's illness: comment on the final diagnosis of Charles Darwin.

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Sheehan, William; Meller, William H; Thurber, Steven

2008-06-20

Without the possibility of confirmatory exhumation, diagnostic inferences about Darwin's illness must remain speculative. A diagnosis of Darwin's aggregate symptoms must account for not only gastrointestinal distress but also his predominant and excessive retching and the conglomerate of other heterogeneous symptoms. We opine that Crohn's disease, posited as the 'final diagnosis', is not sufficient for subsuming his pleiomorphic symptomatology. An additional proposal is outlined that may help to explain his presentation with heterogeneous symptoms. It incorporates constitutional vulnerabilities, psychosomatic influences and Pavlovian conditioning as explanatory variables.

Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, and Natural Selection: A Question of Priority.

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Johnson, Curtis N

2018-05-03

No single author presented Darwin with a more difficult question about his priority in discovering natural selection than the British comparative anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen. Owen was arguably the most influential biologist in Great Britain in Darwin's time. Darwin wanted his approbation for what he believed to be his own theory of natural selection. Unfortunately for Darwin, when Owen first commented in publication about Darwin's theory of descent he was openly hostile (Edinb. Rev. vol. 111, Article VIII, 1860, pp. 487-533, anonymous). Darwin was taken off-guard. In private meetings and correspondence prior to 1860 Owen had been nothing but polite and friendly, even helping Darwin in cataloguing and analyzing Darwin's zoological specimens from the Beagle voyage. Every early indication predicted a life-long friendship and collaboration. But that was not to be. Owen followed his slashing review with a mounting campaign in the 1860s to denounce and discredit both Darwin and his small but ascendant circle of friends and supporters. But that was not enough for Owen. Starting in 1866, perhaps by now realizing Darwin had landed the big fish, Owen launched a new campaign, to claim the discovery of "Darwin's theory" for himself. Darwin naturally fought back, mainly in the "Historical Sketch" that he prefaced to Origin starting in 1861. But when we peel back the layers of personal animus and escalating vituperation we discover in fact their quarrel was generated more by mutual misunderstanding than scientific disagreement. The battle ended only when Darwin finally penetrated to the crux of the matter and put an end to the rivalry in 1872, in the final version of the Sketch.

Cloud amount/frequency, NITRATE and other data from CHARLES DARWIN in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean from 1986-12-20 to 1987-08-14 (NODC Accession 9000045)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) data with oxygen was collected off of Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea using Charles Darwin ship as part of Monsoon And...

Darwin's Legacy to Comparative Psychology and Ethology

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Burghardt, Gordon M.

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin made numerous seminal contributions to the study of animal behavior over his long career. This essay places these contributions in the context of Darwin's life, showing his long-standing interest in psychological and behavioral issues encompassing all species, including humans. Ten areas are highlighted: natural history;…

Causes of mortality of wild birds submitted to the Charles Darwin Research Station, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador from 2002-2004.

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Gottdenker, Nicole L; Walsh, Timothy; Jiménez-Uzcátegui, Gustavo; Betancourt, Franklin; Cruz, Marilyn; Soos, Catherine; Miller, R Eric; Parker, Patricia G

2008-10-01

Necropsy findings were reviewed from wild birds submitted to the Charles Darwin Research Station, Santa Cruz Island, Galápagos Archipelago between 2004 and 2006. One hundred and ninety cases from 27 different species were submitted, and 178 of these cases were evaluated grossly or histologically. Trauma and trauma-related deaths (n=141) dominated necropsy submissions. Infectious causes of avian mortality included myiasis due to Philornis sp. (n=6), avian pox (n=1), and schistosomosis (n=1).

In praise of Darwin

Science.gov (United States)

2009-07-01

Charles Darwin, who was born 200 years ago, is rightly being celebrated as the founding father of modern biology with a series of events around the world this year. Just as Einstein revolutionized physics, so Darwin changed our understanding of life. He came to realize that "natural selection" could account for the huge diversity of life, with more-efficient groups-arising from random variation-always replacing less-efficient groups in a particular environment as a result of competition. After publishing his seminal book On the Origin of Species in 1859-exactly 150 years ago-Darwin, like Einstein, became the most noted scientist of his time.

Charles Darwin and the origins of plant evolutionary developmental biology.

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Friedman, William E; Diggle, Pamela K

2011-04-01

Much has been written of the early history of comparative embryology and its influence on the emergence of an evolutionary developmental perspective. However, this literature, which dates back nearly a century, has been focused on metazoans, without acknowledgment of the contributions of comparative plant morphologists to the creation of a developmental view of biodiversity. We trace the origin of comparative plant developmental morphology from its inception in the eighteenth century works of Wolff and Goethe, through the mid nineteenth century discoveries of the general principles of leaf and floral organ morphogenesis. Much like the stimulus that von Baer provided as a nonevolutionary comparative embryologist to the creation of an evolutionary developmental view of animals, the comparative developmental studies of plant morphologists were the basis for the first articulation of the concept that plant (namely floral) evolution results from successive modifications of ontogeny. Perhaps most surprisingly, we show that the first person to carefully read and internalize the remarkable advances in the understanding of plant morphogenesis in the 1840s and 1850s is none other than Charles Darwin, whose notebooks, correspondence, and (then) unpublished manuscripts clearly demonstrate that he had discovered the developmental basis for the evolutionary transformation of plant form.

Darwin's Book: "On the Origin of Species"

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Hodge, Jonathan

2013-01-01

This essay is an interpretation of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species". It focuses on the contents of the "Origin" as Darwin intended them to be understood and the background to the work, thus revealing the originality (or otherwise) of the work.

Wallace, Darwin and Ternate 1858.

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Smith, Charles H

2014-06-20

Recent debates on the mailing date of Alfred Russel Wallace's 'Ternate essay' to Charles Darwin in the spring of 1858 have ignored certain details that, once taken into account, alter the matter considerably. Here, a closer look is taken at the critical question of whether Wallace's manuscript-accompanying letter represented a reply to the Darwin letter that arrived in Ternate on 9 March; it is concluded that it very probably did not.

Darwin por Manoel Bomfim Darwin by Manoel Bomfim

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Celso Noboru Uemori

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A noção de "luta pela existência" de Charles Darwin foi apropriada por diversas tendências intelectuais e serviu a vários propósitos políticos. Ela deu suporte para aqueles que queriam legitimar o capitalismo, fazer apologia do individualismo, do mercado, do fim dos monopólios e da competição. Ensejou concepções conservadoras como a prática da eugenia, a justificação do elitismo, da conquista e da colonização dos europeus sobre as populações asiáticas e africanas e o racismo. A idéia de luta pela existência foi trabalhada, também, por intelectuais que defendiam a idéia de que lutar pela vida relacionava-se à solidariedade e à cooperação. Manoel Bomfim sofreu influência de Darwin e beneficiou-se de suas idéias para elaborar argumentos, graças aos quais foi visto por seus intérpretes como um autor "radical" e original.Charles Darwin's notion of a 'struggle for existence' has been appropriated by several intellectual currents of opinion, and used for various political purposes. It has served to support free market capitalism, as an apologia of individualism, the market, the end of monopolies, and competition. Conservative conceptions have been based on it: the practice of eugenics, the justification of elitism, of the conquest and colonization of Asian and African peoples by the European, and of racism. On the other hand, the idea of a struggle for existence has been worked on by intellectuals who argued that it was related to solidarity and cooperation. Manoel Bomfim was influenced by Darwin and used his ideas to form arguments which have led his interpreters to see him as a 'radical' and original author.

When sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy (SHE) met Charles Darwin and Francis Galton.

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Parrino, Liborio; Pavesi, Giovanni

2017-08-01

Sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy (SHE) is characterized by short-lasting seizures patterned by repetitive and stereotyped motor events in the same person. In autosomal dominant SHE, genetic factors play a well-known key role. In The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin quotes a plausible example of SHE illustrated by his cousin Sir Francis Galton: "the gentleman…lay fast asleep on his back in bed, raising his right arm slowly in front of his face, up to his forehead, and then dropping it with a jerk, so that the wrist fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The trick did not occur every night, but occasionally, and was independent of any ascertained cause. Sometimes it was repeated incessantly for an hour or more." Similar manifestations during sleep occurred also in the patient's son and granddaughter, suggesting an autosomal inheritance without sex relationship. Differential diagnosis with REM behavior disorder and other parasomnias is discussed. To our knowledge, this could be the first description of a stereotyped SHE pattern with genetic transmission. © 2017 American Academy of Neurology.

Charles Darwin and psychology at the bicentennial and sesquicentennial: an introduction.

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Dewsbury, Donald A

2009-01-01

This article provides an introduction to the special issue on Darwin and psychology at the bicentennial of his birth and the sesquicentennial of his publication of On the Origin of Species. His core contributions, as viewed today, were his theory of natural selection, his naturalistic philosophy, and his mass of evidence for evolutionary change. A brief summary of Darwin's life is also presented. Among Darwin's contributions to psychology were his demonstration of the continuity of species, a model for the study of instinct, a book on the expression of the emotions, and a baby biography. Previous celebrations of Darwin and the changing perceptions of his work since its publication are described. Darwin's theory remains an important part of psychology. 2009 APA, all rights reserved

The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good

OpenAIRE

Robert Frank

2013-01-01

Who was the greater economist — Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, «The New York Times’» economics columnist and best-selling author of «The Economic Naturalist», predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. A...

Modelling of Charles Darwin's tsunami reports

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Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

Darwin landed at Valdivia and Concepcion, Chile, just before, during, and after a great 1835 earthquake. He described his impressions and results of the earthquake-induced natural catastrophe in The Voyage of the Beagle. His description of the tsunami could easily be read as a report from Indonesia or Sri Lanka, after the catastrophic tsunami of 26 December 2004. In particular, Darwin emphasised the dependence of earthquake-induced waves on a form of the coast and the coastal depth: ‘… Talcuhano and Callao are situated at the head of great shoaling bays, and they have always suffered from this phenomenon; whereas, the town of Valparaiso, which is seated close on the border of a profound ocean... has never been overwhelmed by one of these terrific deluges…' . He reports also, that ‘… the whole body of the sea retires from the coast, and then returns in great waves of overwhelming force ...' (we cite the Darwin's sentences following researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). The coastal evolution of a tsunami was analytically studied in many publications (see, for example, Synolakis, C.E., Bernard, E.N., 2006. Philos. Trans. R. Soc., Ser. A, 364, 2231-2265; Tinti, S., Tonini, R. 205. J.Fluid Mech., 535, 11-21). However, the Darwin's reports and the influence of the coastal depth on the formation and the evolution of the steep front and the profile of tsunami did not practically discuss. Recently, a mathematical theory of these phenomena was presented in researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474. The theory describes the waves which are excited due to nonlinear effects within a shallow coastal zone. The tsunami elevation is described by two components: . Here is the linear (prime) component. It describes the wave coming from the deep ocean. is the nonlinear component. This component may become very important near the coastal line. After that the theory of the shallow waves is used. This theory yields the linear equation for and the weakly

Darwin's Revolution in Thought: An Illustrated Lecture. Teaching Guide and Videotape.

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Gould, Stephen Jay

"Darwin's Revolution in Thought" is Stephen Jay Gould's definitive treatise on Charles Darwin. This 50-minute classroom edition videotaped lecture is structured in the form of a paradox and three riddles about Darwin's life. Each is designed to shed light on one of the key features of the theory of natural selection, its philosophical…

Oceanographic profile, temperature, salinity, oxygen, and other measurements collected using bottle casts from the CHARLES DARWIN in the North Atlantic from 27 April 1991 to 6 June 1991 (NODC Accession 0000509)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — Physical, chemical, and nutrients data were collected from bottle casts in the North Atlantic from the CHARLES DARWIN from 27 April 1991 to 6 June 1991. Data were...

Darwinizing the Danes, 1859-1909

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Gregersen, Niels Henrik; Kjærgaard, Peter C.; Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2008-01-01

Charles Darwin is a crucial figure in nineteenth-century science with an extensive and varied reception in different countries and disciplines. His theory had a revolutionary impact not only on biology, but also on other natural sciences and the new social sciences. The term ‘Darwinism', already...... popular in Darwin's lifetime, ranged across many different areas and ideological aspects. and his own ideas about the implications of evolution for human cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities were often interpreted in a way that did not mirror his own intentions. The implications...... for religious, philosophical and political issues and institutions remain as momentous today as in his own time. This volume conveys the many-sidedness of Darwin's reception and exhibit his far-reaching impact on our self- understanding as human beings....

The Evolution of Darwinism.

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Stebbins, G. Ledyard; Ayala, Francisco J.

1985-01-01

Recent developments in molecular biology and new interpretations of the fossil record are gradually altering and adding to Charles Darwin's theory, which has been the standard view of the process of evolution for 40 years. Several of these developments and interpretations are identified and discussed. (JN)

More than a Mentor: Leonard Darwin's Contribution to the Assimilation of Mendelism into Eugenics and Darwinism.

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Serpente, Norberto

2016-08-01

This article discusses the contribution to evolutionary theory of Leonard Darwin (1850-1943), the eighth child of Charles Darwin. By analysing the correspondence Leonard Darwin maintained with Ronald Aylmer Fisher in conjunction with an assessment of his books and other written works between the 1910s and 1930s, this article argues for a more prominent role played by him than the previously recognised in the literature as an informal mentor of Fisher. The paper discusses Leonard's efforts to amalgamate Mendelism with both Eugenics and Darwinism in order for the first to base their policies on new scientific developments and to help the second in finding a target for natural selection. Without a formal qualification in biological sciences and as such mistrusted by some "formal" scientists, Leonard Darwin engaged with key themes of Darwinism such as mimicry, the role of mutations on speciation and the process of genetic variability, arriving at important conclusions concerning the usefulness of Mendelian genetics for his father's theory.

Mitochondrial disorder caused Charles Darwin's cyclic vomiting syndrome

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Finsterer J

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Josef Finsterer,1 John Hayman21Krankenanstalt Rudolfstiftng, Vienna, Austria; 2Department of Pathology, University of Melbourne, Victoria, AustraliaBackground: Charles Darwin (CD, “father of modern biology,” suffered from multisystem illness from early adulthood. The most disabling manifestation was cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS. This study aims at finding the possible cause of CVS in CD.Methods: A literature search using the PubMed database was carried out, and CD's complaints, as reported in his personal writings and those of his relatives, friends, colleagues, biographers, were compared with various manifestations of mitochondrial disorders (MIDs, known to cause CVS, described in the literature.Results: Organ tissues involved in CD's disease were brain, nerves, muscles, vestibular apparatus, heart, gut, and skin. Cerebral manifestations included episodic headache, visual disturbance, episodic memory loss, periodic paralysis, hysterical crying, panic attacks, and episodes of depression. Manifestations of polyneuropathy included numbness, paresthesias, increased sweating, temperature sensitivity, and arterial hypotension. Muscular manifestations included periods of exhaustion, easy fatigability, myalgia, and muscle twitching. Cardiac manifestations included episodes of palpitations and chest pain. Gastrointestinal manifestations were CVS, dental problems, abnormal seasickness, eructation, belching, and flatulence. Dermatological manifestations included painful lips, dermatitis, eczema, and facial edema. Treatments with beneficial effects to his complaints were rest, relaxation, heat, and hydrotherapy.Conclusion: CVS in CD was most likely due to a multisystem, nonsyndromic MID. This diagnosis is based upon the multisystem nature of his disease, the fact that CVS is most frequently the manifestation of a MID, the family history, the variable phenotypic expression between affected family members, the fact that symptoms were triggered by stress

Spanish Darwinian iconography: Darwin and evolutionism portrayed in Spanish press cartoons.

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Domínguez, Martí; Mateu, Anna

2013-11-01

The theory of evolution has played a major role in the press since it was put forward by Charles Darwin in 1859. Its key role in biology and human philosophy is reflected by its presence in press cartoons, sections where the image of social reality is depicted in a more direct and satirical light. Through cartoons, artists have used their ingenuity or wit to portray one of the most controversial scientific figures of the past two centuries. This study examines the views portrayed by Spanish cartoonists about Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in 2009, the bicentenary of the naturalist's birth and the celebration of 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. These cartoons show how the controversy between Darwinism and religion remain latent in the heart of Spanish society, and how the figure of Darwin has become one of the main icons of science.

Trees and networks before and after Darwin

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Ragan Mark A

2009-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract It is well-known that Charles Darwin sketched abstract trees of relationship in his 1837 notebook, and depicted a tree in the Origin of Species (1859. Here I attempt to place Darwin's trees in historical context. By the mid-Eighteenth century the Great Chain of Being was increasingly seen to be an inadequate description of order in nature, and by about 1780 it had been largely abandoned without a satisfactory alternative having been agreed upon. In 1750 Donati described aquatic and terrestrial organisms as forming a network, and a few years later Buffon depicted a network of genealogical relationships among breeds of dogs. In 1764 Bonnet asked whether the Chain might actually branch at certain points, and in 1766 Pallas proposed that the gradations among organisms resemble a tree with a compound trunk, perhaps not unlike the tree of animal life later depicted by Eichwald. Other trees were presented by Augier in 1801 and by Lamarck in 1809 and 1815, the latter two assuming a transmutation of species over time. Elaborate networks of affinities among plants and among animals were depicted in the late Eighteenth and very early Nineteenth centuries. In the two decades immediately prior to 1837, so-called affinities and/or analogies among organisms were represented by diverse geometric figures. Series of plant and animal fossils in successive geological strata were represented as trees in a popular textbook from 1840, while in 1858 Bronn presented a system of animals, as evidenced by the fossil record, in a form of a tree. Darwin's 1859 tree and its subsequent elaborations by Haeckel came to be accepted in many but not all areas of biological sciences, while network diagrams were used in others. Beginning in the early 1960s trees were inferred from protein and nucleic acid sequences, but networks were re-introduced in the mid-1990s to represent lateral genetic transfer, increasingly regarded as a fundamental mode of evolution at least for

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, directional selection, and the evolutionary sciences today

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Kutschera, Ulrich

2009-11-01

The book On the Origin of Species, published in November 1859, is an “abstract” without references, compiled by Charles Darwin from a much longer manuscript entitled “Natural Selection.” Here, I summarize the five theories that can be extracted from Darwin’s monograph, explain the true meaning of the phrase “struggle for life” (i.e., competition and cooperation), and outline Darwin’s original concept of natural selection in populations of animals and plants. Since neither Darwin nor Alfred R. Wallace distinguished between stabilizing and directional natural selection, the popular argument that “selection only eliminates but is not creative” is still alive today. However, I document that August Weismann ( Die Bedeutung der sexuellen Fortpflanzung für die Selektions-Theorie. Gustav Fischer-Verlag, Jena, 1886) and Ivan Schmalhausen ( Factors of evolution. The theory of stabilizing selection. The Blackiston Company, Philadelphia, 1949) provided precise definitions for directional (dynamic) selection in nature and illustrate this “Weismann-Schmalhausen principle” with respect to the evolutionary development of novel phenotypes. Then, the modern (synthetic) theory of biological evolution that is based on the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky ( Genetics and the origin of species. Columbia University Press, New York, 1937) and others, and the expanded version of this system of theories, are outlined. Finally, I document that symbiogenesis (i.e., primary endosymbiosis, a process that gave rise to the first eukaryotic cells), ongoing directional natural selection, and the dynamic Earth (plate tectonics, i.e., geological events that both created and destroyed terrestrial and aquatic habitats) were the key processes responsible for the documented macroevolutionary patterns in all five kingdoms of life. Since the evolutionary development of the earliest archaic bacteria more than 3,500 mya, the biosphere of our dynamic planet has been dominated by

Darwin and Emotion Expression

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Hess, Ursula; Thibault, Pascal

2009-01-01

In his book "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Charles Darwin (1872/1965) defended the argument that emotion expressions are evolved and adaptive (at least at some point in the past) and serve an important communicative function. The ideas he developed in his book had an important impact on the field and spawned rich domains of…

The Most Important of All the Organs: Darwin on the Brain

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Jacyna, Stephen

2009-01-01

This article discusses Charles Darwin's interest in topics that may broadly be defined as "neurological" in character. Using published and manuscript materials, it examines the sources of Darwin's knowledge of neurological matters and seeks to explain why questions concerning the relation of mind and brain both in humans and other animals were…

Bog Stvoritelj u djelu Charlesa Darwina

OpenAIRE

Balabanić, Josip

2009-01-01

U ovome članku traži se odgovor na pitanje zašto u djelu Charlesa Darwina (1809-1882) ima iznenađujuća količina izravna teološkog sadržaja i zašto je, premda pristaša znanstvenog redukcionizma, u svoja kapitalna djela Postanak vrsta (1859) i Podrijetlo čovjeka (1871) unio egzistencijalnu dimenziju vlastita religioznog stajališta o Bogu kao stvoritelju putem sekundarnih uzroka (tj. prirodnih zakona). Na temelju njegovih izjava i navoda iz Autobiografje izvodi se zaključak kako Darwin Stvoritel...

Temperature, salinity and other variables collected from discrete sample and profile observations using CTD, bottle and other instruments from CHARLES DARWIN in the Indian Ocean from 1987-11-12 to 1987-12-17 (NCEI Accession 0157468)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — NCEI Accession 0157468 includes chemical, discrete sample, physical and profile data collected from CHARLES DARWIN in the Indian Ocean from 1987-11-12 to 1987-12-17....

Darwin and his Mathematical Inspirations

Science.gov (United States)

Pugliese, Andrea

2008-07-01

I have been kindly asked by the organizers of the BIOCOMP2007 conference to provide a short sketch of Charles Darwin's contribution to science, and of the role mathematics has played in his discoveries and in subsequent developments. I felt flattered by the invitation but rather unfit to it, since I have no particular expertise in evolutionary theory, and even less in its history; eventually, I decided to accept the invitation, appreciating the opportunity to read some more about Darwin, and the importance of making his contribution better known, at a time where teaching at school the theory of evolution is coming under attack also in Italy (perhaps under American influence). I hope to be able here to give a glimpse of the history of Darwinian thought, and of some current research areas, that will lead some readers towards further reading. There are many excellent books available now about Darwin and Darwinian theory, and my presentation is based on many of them, listed in the Bibliography; I found especially illuminating the book by Gayon Darwinism's Struggle for Survival, a history of theoretical Darwinism illustrating the scientific content, and the philosophical implications, of the debates on evolutionary theory at Darwin's time and up to the "modern synthesis".

Protestant Responses to Darwinism in Denmark, 1859-1914

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

2011-01-01

The clergyman N.F.S. Grundtvig's followers, who constituted a major fraction within the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Established Church, were the most vocal Danish commentators on the religious consequences of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution from 1859 to 1914. While evangelicals and high......-churchmen within the church remained critical of evolution throughout the period, the Grundtvigians were divided over the issue. Orthodox Grundtvigians criticized Darwinism on philosophical and biblical grounds, while liberal neo-Grundtvigians came to terms with evolution by combining Grundtvig's critique...

Did Darwin change his mind about the Fuegians?

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Radick, Gregory

2010-06-01

Shocked by what he considered to be the savagery he encountered in Tierra del Fuego, Charles Darwin ranked the Fuegians lowest among the human races. An enduring story has it, however, that Darwin was later so impressed by the successes of missionaries there, and by the grandeur they discovered in the native tongue, that he changed his mind. This story has served diverse interests, religious and scientific. But Darwin in fact continued to view the Fuegians as he had from the start, as lowly but improvable. And while his case for their unity with the other human races drew on missionary evidence, that evidence concerned emotional expression, not language. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Darwin and bacteria].

Science.gov (United States)

Ledermann D, Walter

2009-02-01

As in 2009 the scientific world celebrates two hundreds years from the birthday of Charles Darwin and one hundred and fifty from the publication of The Origin of Species, an analysis of his complete work is performed, looking for any mention of bacteria. But it seems that the great naturahst never took knowledge about its existence, something rather improbable in a time when the discovery of bacteria shook the medical world, or he deliberately ignored them, not finding a place for such microscopic beings into his theory of evolution. But the bacteria badly affected his familiar life, killing scarlet fever one of his children and worsening to death the evolution of tuberculosis of his favourite Annie. Darwin himself could suffer the sickness of Chagas, whose etiological agent has a similar level to bacteria in the scale of evolution.

Alkalinity, temperature, salinity and other variables collected from discrete sample and profile observations using CTD, bottle and other instruments from the BELGICA, CHARLES DARWIN and METEOR in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1997-06-01 to 1999-09-01 (NODC Accession 0115763)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — NODC Accession 0115763 includes chemical, discrete sample, physical and profile data collected from BELGICA, CHARLES DARWIN and METEOR in the North Atlantic Ocean...

Darwin and Wagner: Evolution and Aesthetic Appreciation

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Ostergaard, Edvin

2011-01-01

Two of the most influential works of the Western nineteenth century were completed in 1859: Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" and Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde." Although created within very different cultural traditions, these works show some striking similarities: both brought about a critical, long-lasting debate and caused…

Galapagos: Darwin, evolution, and ENT.

Science.gov (United States)

Bluestone, Charles D

2009-10-01

This year is especially important in the history of the theory of evolution; 2009 is the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the sesquicentennial anniversary of his publication, The Origin of Species. Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands as a young man, which greatly influenced his thinking. My son Jim and I had the good fortune to visit these islands in January 2009 and see firsthand what led Darwin to arrive at his monumental insights into the origins of life on this planet. I have described my observations and related some of this experience to the ear, nose, and throat, albeit with whimsy in several instances. Nonetheless, some of the adaptations in the animals on these unique islands may have bearing on my hypotheses related to the incidence and pathogenesis of otitis media in humans. It is hoped the reader will share my enthusiasm for the experience we had on these fantastic islands and tour them in the future.

The "Annie hypothesis": did the death of his daughter cause Darwin to "give up Christianity"?

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Van Wyhe, John; Pallen, Mark J

2012-01-01

This article examines one of the most widely believed episodes in the life of Charles Darwin, that the death of his daughter Annie in 1851 caused the end of Darwin's belief in Christianity, and according to some versions, ended his attendance of church on Sundays. This hypothesis, it is argued, is commonly treated as a straightforward true account of Darwin's life, yet there is little or no supporting evidence. Furthermore, we argue, there is sufficient evidence that Darwin's loss of faith occurred before Annie's death.

Understanding phototropism: from Darwin to today.

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Holland, Jennifer J; Roberts, Diana; Liscum, Emmanuel

2009-01-01

Few individuals have had the lasting impact on such a breadth of science as Charles Darwin. While his writings about time aboard the HMS Beagle, his study of the Galapagos islands (geology, fauna, and flora), and his theories on evolution are well known, less appreciated are his studies on plant growth responses to a variety of environmental stimuli. In fact, Darwin, together with the help of his botanist son Francis, left us an entire book, 'The power of movements in plants', describing his many, varied, and insightful observations on this topic. Darwin's findings have provided an impetus for an entire field of study, the study of plant tropic responses, or differential growth (curvature) of plant organs in response to directional stimuli. One tropic response that has received a great deal of attention is the phototropic response, or curvature response to directional light. This review summarizes many of the most significant advancements that have been made in our understanding of this response and place these recent findings in the context of Darwin's initial observations.

Bioturbation: a fresh look at Darwin's last idea

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meysman, F.J.R.; Middelburg, J.J.; Heip, C.H.R.

2006-01-01

Bioturbation refers to the biological reworking of soils and sediments, and its importance for soil processes and geomorphology was first realised by Charles Darwin, who devoted his last scientific book to the subject. Here, we review some new insights into the evolutionary and ecological role of

La creatividad científica de Charles Darwin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorge Valenzuela Garcés

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Un reverendo que había sido capellán de la reina Víctoria siente terroral leer a Darwin y, desde su posición en la Iglesia, no duda en combatirlo.Karl Marx, después de leer El origen de las especies (1859, sienteel impulso de dedicarle su ópera magna El capital, pero Darwin declinael honor y aconseja al prusiano rojo que piense en otro intelectual conmás méritos que él. Convencidos de sus tesis, gran cantidad de organizacionesdel movimiento obrero europeo, durante la segunda mitad delsiglo XIX, se doblega ante él y se convierte al darwinismo, no sin antesasumir el nuevo catecismo de la ciencia que su teoría ha traído al mundode los materialistas y desposeídos. Hoy, pasados ciento cincuenta añosde la publicación de su obra cumbre, las diversas comunidades científicasreconocen la importancia de su contribución en campos comola genética, etnobotánica, antropología, teología, biología, geografía,filosofía, neurología, psicoanálisis, psiquiatría o la lingüística.

An Amphibious Being: How Maritime Surveying Reshaped Darwin's Approach to Natural History.

Science.gov (United States)

Sponsel, Alistair

2016-06-01

This essay argues that Charles Darwin's distinctive approach to studying distribution and diversity was shaped by his face-to-face interactions with maritime surveyors during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (1831-1836). Introducing their hydrographic surveying methods into natural history enabled him to compare fossil and living marine organisms, to compare sedimentary rocks to present-day marine sediments, and to compare landscapes to submarine topology, thereby realizing Charles Lyell's fanciful ambition for a superior form of geology that might be practiced by an "amphibious being." Darwin's theories of continental uplift, coral reef formation, and the origin of species all depended on his amphibious natural history. This essay contributes to our understanding of theorizing in nineteenth-century natural history by illustrating that specific techniques of observing and collecting could themselves help to generate a particular theoretical orientation and, indeed, that such practical experiences were a more proximate source of Darwin's "Humboldtian" interest in distribution and diversity than Alexander von Humboldt's writings themselves. Darwin's debt to the hydrographers became obscured in two ways: through the "funneling" of credit produced by single-authorship publication in natural history and the "telescoping" of memory by which Darwin's new theories made him recall his former researches as though he had originally undertaken them for the very purpose of producing the later theory.

Charles Darwin's emotional expression "experiment" and his contribution to modern neuropharmacology.

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Snyder, Peter J; Kaufman, Rebecca; Harrison, John; Maruff, Paul

2010-04-08

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, Darwin had corresponded with the French physician and physiologist, G. B. A. Duchenne, regarding Duchenne's experimental manipulation of human facial expression of emotion, by applying Galvanic electrical stimulation directly to facial muscles. Duchenne had produced a set of over 60 photographic plates to illustrate his view that there are different muscles in the human face that are separately responsible for each individual emotion. Darwin studied this material very carefully and he received permission from Duchenne in 1871 to reproduce several of these images in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin had doubted Duchenne's view that there were individual muscle groups that mediate the expression of dozens of separable emotions, and he wondered whether there might instead be a fewer set of core emotions that are expressed with great stability worldwide and across cultures. Prompted by his doubts regarding the veracity of Duchenne's model, Darwin conducted what may have been the first-ever single-blind study of the recognition of human facial expression of emotion. This single experiment was a little-known forerunner for an entire modern field of study with contemporary clinical relevance. Moreover, his specific question about cross-cultural recognition of the cardinal emotions in faces is a topic that is being actively studied (in the twenty-first century) with the hope of developing novel biomarkers to aid the discovery of new therapies for the treatment of schizophrenia, autism, and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

102 Revolutions in Evolutionary Thought: Darwin and After

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

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Natural Selection, or the Preservation of. Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Charles Darwin. 204. SERIES ARTICLES. 179 Snippets of Physics. The Power of Nothing. T Padmanabhan. 191 Aerobasics – An Introduction to Aeronautics. Airfoils and Wings in Subsonic Flow. S P Govinda Raju. 124. 203. Information and.

There is grandeur in this view of Newton: Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and Victorian conceptions of scientific virtue.

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Bellon, Richard

2014-01-01

For Victorian men of science, the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century represented a moral awakening. Great theoretical triumphs of inductive science flowed directly from a philosophical spirit that embraced the virtues of self-discipline, courage, patience and humility. Isaac Newton exemplified this union of moral and intellectual excellence. This, at least, was the story crafted by scientific leaders like David Brewster, Thomas Chalmers, John Herschel, Adam Sedgwick and William Whewell. Not everyone accepted this reading of history. Evangelicals who decried the 'materialism' of mainstream science assigned a different meaning to Newton's legacy on behalf of their 'scriptural' alternative. High-church critics of science like John Henry Newman, on the other hand, denied that Newton's secular achievements carried any moral significance at all. These debates over Newtonian standards of philosophical behavior had a decisive influence on Charles Darwin as he developed his theory of evolution by natural selection. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evolutionary ethics from Darwin to Moore.

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Allhoff, Fritz

2003-01-01

Evolutionary ethics has a long history, dating all the way back to Charles Darwin. Almost immediately after the publication of the Origin, an immense interest arose in the moral implications of Darwinism and whether the truth of Darwinism would undermine traditional ethics. Though the biological thesis was certainly exciting, nobody suspected that the impact of the Origin would be confined to the scientific arena. As one historian wrote, 'whether or not ancient populations of armadillos were transformed into the species that currently inhabit the new world was certainly a topic about which zoologists could disagree. But it was in discussing the broader implications of the theory...that tempers flared and statements were made which could transform what otherwise would have been a quiet scholarly meeting into a social scandal' (Farber 1994, 22). Some resistance to the biological thesis of Darwinism sprung from the thought that it was incompatible with traditional morality and, since one of them had to go, many thought that Darwinism should be rejected. However, some people did realize that a secular ethics was possible so, even if Darwinism did undermine traditional religious beliefs, it need not have any effects on moral thought. Before I begin my discussion of evolutionary ethics from Darwin to Moore, I would like to make some more general remarks about its development. There are three key events during this history of evolutionary ethics. First, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of the Species (Darwin 1859). Since one did not have a fully developed theory of evolution until 1859, there exists little work on evolutionary ethics until then. Shortly thereafter, Herbert Spencer (1898) penned the first systematic theory of evolutionary ethics, which was promptly attacked by T.H. Huxley (Huxley 1894). Second, at about the turn of the century, moral philosophers entered the fray and attempted to demonstrate logical errors in Spencer's work; such errors were alluded

Darwinism Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory.

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Gould, Stephen Jay

1987-01-01

Discusses various developments in both science and theology following the work of Charles Darwin on evolution. Differentiates between the facts regarding evolution and the theory of natural selection as a mechanism for evolutionary change. Warns that the differences between facts and theory have not been adequately emphasized by scientists. (TW)

Darwin as a student of behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

Thierry, Bernard

2010-02-01

In The Expression of the Emotions, Charles Darwin documents evolutionary continuity between animals and humans, emphasizing the universality of expressions in man. Most of the book addresses human behavior, and its influence on the study of animal behavior has been weak. The issue of natural selection is remarkably absent from this book, which relies on the inheritance of acquired characters rather than on a genuine Darwinian logic. Yet Konrad Lorenz considered Darwin to be a forerunner of behavioral biology. The reason was to be found in The Descent of Man and chapter VIII of The Origin of Species, where Darwin provides an explanation of behavior through selection, stating that the same mechanisms explaining morphological changes also account for gradual improvements in instincts. He assessed the accuracy of his evolutionary theory by directly studying animal behavior, hence laying the foundations of behavioral research for the next century. 2009 Académie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.

Darwin and Reductionisms: Victorian, Neo-Darwinian and Postgenomic Biologies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Angelique Richardson

2010-10-01

Full Text Available This article compares the open-ended Darwinism of Charles Darwin, George Lewes, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy with reductive post-Weismann and early eugenist views and more recent neo-Darwinian ideas including literary Darwinism. It argues that some Victorians had a clear sense of the complexities of the natural world, and of the centrality of environment to life. This awareness contrasts with the processes of divorce and isolation that underpin neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary development. But biologists and philosophers of biology are now emphasising the complex and dynamic relations between organism and environment in ways that would have appealed to Darwin’s contemporaries. The article establishes that there are significant parallels between mid-Victorian and postgenomic thought.

Dissolved inorganic carbon, pH, alkalinity, temperature, salinity and other variables collected from discrete sample and profile observations using Alkalinity titrator, CTD and other instruments from the CHARLES DARWIN in the Indian Ocean from 2002-03-01 to 2002-04-15 (NODC Accession 0108226)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — NODC Accession 0108226 includes chemical, discrete sample, physical and profile data collected from CHARLES DARWIN in the Indian Ocean from 2002-03-01 to 2002-04-15...

Music, Play and Darwin's Children: Pedagogical Reflections of and on the Ontogeny/Phylogeny Relationship

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Bannan, Nicholas

2014-01-01

This article explores the relationship between ideas about the role and purpose of music introduced in the major publications of Charles Darwin, and the fields of child development, music education and pedagogy. It also considers the significant influence on Darwin's work of his own biography and family life. In the global village of…

Is Darwinism past its "sell-by" date? The Origin of Species at 150.

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Ruse, Michael

2011-03-01

Many people worry that the theory of evolution that Charles Darwin gave in his Origin of Species is now dated and no longer part of modern science. This essay challenges this claim, arguing that the central core of the Origin is as vital today as it ever was, although naturally the science keeps moving on. Darwin provided the foundation not the finished product. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin's Invention: Inheritance & the "Mad Dream" of Pangenesis

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McComas, William F.

2012-01-01

This article recounts the story of the development of pangenesis, a principle proposed by Charles Darwin to describe the rules of inheritance and the source of new variation, two concepts vital to his proposal of evolution by natural selection. Historical accounts such as this are infrequently included in texts and classroom discussions but can…

Darwin vs. Wallace: When Poetry Dies and When Poetry Survives in the Not-so-Natural Selection of Memetic Evolution

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Christensen, Bryce

2011-01-01

The theory of memetic evolution--explaining the reproduction of cultural units called "memes"--illuminates the decline of poetry as a cultural presence by clarifying the contrasting attitudes towards poetry manifested by the co-discoverers of natural selection: Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's eventual indifference to poetry…

Dissolved inorganic carbon, pH, alkalinity, temperature, salinity and other variables collected from discrete sample and profile observations using CTD, bottle and other instruments from the BELGICA, CHARLES DARWIN and others in the Bay of Biscay, English Channel and others from 1993-04-01 to 1995-11-01 (NODC Accession 0115608)

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National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — NODC Accession 0115608 includes chemical, discrete sample, physical and profile data collected from BELGICA, CHARLES DARWIN, DISCOVERY, HEINCKE, MADORNINA, METEOR,...

Charles Robert Darwin (to the 200th Birthday and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of the book «On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life»

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vagin Yu. V.

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Charles Robert Darwin (to the 200th Birthday and the 150th Anniversary of the publication of the book «On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life»

Some of the Best Online Darwin Resources

Science.gov (United States)

la Velle, Linda

2009-01-01

Ask most men or women in the street who Charles Darwin was and the chances are that they will know something of the work he did: the work that has revolutionised our understanding of the living world and our place in it. The 200th centenary of his birth was in February 2009. Over the 150 years since the publication of his seminal work On the…

The necessity of Darwin: this journal's tribute to the most influential scientist of all time.

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Sessions, Stanley K; Macgregor, Herbert C

2009-01-01

Charles Darwin is considered by many to be one of the most influential scientists of all time. His theory of evolution via natural selection was astonishingly prescient in terms of what modern biology has revealed in the 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, especially since Darwin was unaware of even the most fundamental aspects of transmission genetics, not to mention molecular biology. Here we speculate what impact it would have had on Darwin's thinking if he had known what we now know about molecular biology and cytogenetics.

Sympathetic science: Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, and the passions of Victorian naturalists.

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Endersby, Jim

2009-01-01

This essay examines the complex tangle of emotional and scientific attachments that linked Darwin and botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Analyzing their roles as husbands, fathers, and novel readers demonstrates that possessing and expressing sympathy was as important for Victorian naturalists as it was for Victorian husbands. Sympathy was a scientific skill that Victorian naturalists regarded as necessary to fully understand the living world; although sympathy became increasingly gendered as feminine over the course of the century, its importance to male naturalists requires us to rethink the ways gender roles were negotiated in Victorian Britain. Botany was, for men like Darwin and Hooker, an acceptably masculine pursuit that nevertheless allowed--and even required--them to be sensitive and sympathetic.

37 CFR 1.809 - Examination procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 37 Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Examination procedures. 1.809... Biological Material § 1.809 Examination procedures. (a) The examiner shall determine pursuant to § 1.104 in... deposited biological material sufficient to specifically identify it and to permit examination; and (4) The...

Darwin 101 (Enhanced): From Earth to Space

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Rothschild, Lynn J.

2015-01-01

Charles Darwin was a modest man, yet one of the great revolutionaries of intellectual history. Born into a culture wedded to Genesis, he brought biology into the realm of natural world. The implications range from of the "why" questions of biology, to our view societies to our ability to combat AIDS. In our era of genomics and space exploration, these insights are being applied to the age-old question: are we alone?

Race, language, and mental evolution in Darwin's descent of man.

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Alter, Stephen G

2007-01-01

Charles Darwin was notoriously ambiguous in his remarks about the relationship between human evolution and biological race. He stressed the original unity of the races, yet he also helped to popularize the notion of a racial hierarchy filling the gaps between the highest anthropoids and civilized Europeans. A focus on Darwin's explanation of how humans initially evolved, however, shows that he mainly stressed not hierarchy but a version of humanity's original mental unity. In his book The Descent of Man, Darwin emphasized a substantial degree of mental development (including the incipient use of language) in the early, monogenetic phase of human evolution. This development, he argued, necessarily came before primeval man's numerical increase, geographic dispersion, and racial diversification, because only thus could one explain how that group was able to spread at the expense of rival ape-like populations. This scenario stood opposed to a new evolutionary polygenism formulated in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species by his ostensible supporters Alfred Russel Wallace and Ernst Haeckel. Darwin judged this outlook inadequate to the task of explaining humanity's emergence. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Charles Darwin, Imperium Britannicum a Evropa. K Darwinovu dvojitému výročí

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hermann, Tomáš; Stella, M.

2009-01-01

Roč. 42, č. 2 (2009), s. 103-111 ISSN 0300-4414 R&D Projects: GA AV ČR KJB800630701 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z80630520 Keywords : Darwin´s theory * history of biology * reception of Darwinism Subject RIV: AB - History

Looking at Darwin: portraits and the making of an icon.

Science.gov (United States)

Browne, Janet

2009-09-01

With increased attention on the visual in the history of science, there is renewed interest in the role of portraiture and other forms of personal imagery in constructing scientific reputation and the circulation of scientific ideas. This essay indicates some directions in which researchers could push forward by studying the dissemination of pictures and portraits of Charles Darwin. Selected portraits are discussed, with particular attention paid to their circulation. The mode of production and original intent of these portraits is briefly addressed, but the thrust of the argument is to highlight subsequent shifts in usage. While self-fashioning is an important part of the story, it is useful also to dwell on the rise and diversification of printed media in conjunction with escalating interest in Darwin as a celebrity figure. Historicizing the variety of opportunities that people have had of "looking"at Darwin adds considerably to our understanding of scientific fame.

Putting Darwin in His Place: The Need to Watch Our Language

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Braterman, Paul S.; Holbrook, J. Britt

2009-01-01

In this article, the authors examine the use of language in debating evolution, and suggest careful choice of the terms by which people describe both themselves and their opponents. Present-day evolution science is solidly based on fact, and is as far advanced from Charles Darwin's original theory as present-day chemistry is from Dalton's atomic…

Charles Darwin in modern epidemiology and public health: the celebration continues.

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Hanage, W P

2011-01-01

2009 was Darwin year; his familiar bearded face peered out from a great radiation of TV series, book covers and even a feature film. The reasons for this were his bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. However, there is no reason the celebrations should cease with the turn of the New Year.

Our Way to Understand the World: Darwin's Controversial Inheritance

Science.gov (United States)

Schmidt-Salomon, Michael

Shortly after he had completed the first draft of his theory of evolution in 1844, Charles Darwin wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker, the botanist, that publishing the theory seemed to him "like confessing a murder" (Glaubrecht 2009, p. 161). Right from the beginning, Darwin was aware of the far-reaching impact his theory would have. And this was probably one of the main reasons for his postponing the publication of his ideas for such a long time. After the completion of the 230 page text in 1844, it was another 15 years (!) before his famous book On the Origin of Species was published. Since that time 150 years have passed, but the theory of evolution is as controversial as ever. Darwin's dangerous idea is still putting many traditional world views through some very hard tests. This is the central theme to which I have devoted the following thoughts. I have divided my study into three parts: I shall start by shedding some light on the conflict between Darwin's challenging idea and traditional (Christian) beliefs, a conflict that has lasted till this very day. In the second part, I want to focus on the ideological abuse of the theory of evolution. The third and final part introduces Julian Huxley's concept of 'evolutionary humanism', which links Darwin's scientific inheritance with a distinctly humanist ethic.

A history of altruism focusing on Darwin, Allee and E.O. Wilson.

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Domondon, Andrew T

2013-06-01

The problem of altruism refers to the apparent difficulty in reconciling the existence of altruists, individuals who reduce their own fitness to increase the fitness of others, with natural selection. A historical and philosophical overview of solutions to this apparent contradiction is presented through a close reading of the key texts of Charles Darwin, Warder C. Allee and Edward O. Wilson. Following an analysis of Darwin's explanation for altruism, I examine the ideas of group selection and kin selection advanced by Allee and Wilson, respectively, Attention is also given to the philosophical implications each associated with their respective solutions. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin, Hume, Morgan, and the verae causae of psychology.

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Clatterbuck, Hayley

2016-12-01

Charles Darwin and C. Lloyd Morgan forward two influential principles of cognitive ethological inference that yield conflicting results about the extent of continuity in the cognitive traits of humans and other animals. While these principles have been interpreted as reflecting commitments to different senses of parsimony, in fact, both principles result from the same vera causa inferential strategy, according to which "We ought to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances". Instead, the conflict stems from Darwin's and Morgan's views about the true causes of human psychology. Darwin holds a thoroughly Humean philosophy of the human mind, from which he infers significant continuity between human and animal minds. In contrast, Morgan argues that Humean cognitive mechanisms cannot account for a class of uniquely human behaviors, and therefore, he concludes that there is a significant discontinuity between human and animal cognition. This historical debate is informative for current controversies in comparative psychology. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

La polémica del evolucionismo: lenguaje, religión e ideología

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raymundo Casas Navarro

2011-05-01

Full Text Available Este año, 2009, se celebran dos efemérides científicas que tienencomo protagonista a un genial hombre de ciencia: Charles Darwin,el autor de la teoría de la evolución por medio de la selección natural.En efecto, se cumplen el bicentenario del nacimiento del grannaturalista (ocurrido el 12 de febrero de 1809 y el sesquicentenariode la publicación de su magna obra El origen de las especies por mediode la selección natural (la primera edición data del 24 de noviembrede 1859.

42 CFR 493.1809 - Limitation on Medicaid payment.

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2010-10-01

... 42 Public Health 5 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Limitation on Medicaid payment. 493.1809 Section 493.1809 Public Health CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & MEDICAID SERVICES, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN... Limitation on Medicaid payment. As provided in section 1902(a)(9)(C) of the Act, payment for laboratory...

Monkeys into Men and Men into Monkeys: Chance and Contingency in the Evolution of Man, Mind and Morals in Charles Kingsley's Water Babies.

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Hale, Piers J

2013-01-01

The nineteenth century theologian, author and poet Charles Kingsley was a notable populariser of Darwinian evolution. He championed Darwin's cause and that of honesty in science for more than a decade from 1859 to 1871. Kingsley's interpretation of evolution shaped his theology, his politics and his views on race. The relationship between men and apes set the context for Kingsley's consideration of these issues. Having defended Darwin for a decade in 1871 Kingsley was dismayed to read Darwin's account of the evolution of morals in Descent of Man. He subsequently distanced himself from Darwin's conclusions even though he remained an ardent evolutionist until his death in 1875.

Darwinism and cultural struggles in rural Askov and metropolitan Copenhagen in nineteenth-century Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hjermitslev, Hans Henrik

In the 1870s, when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Descent of Man were translated into Danish by the botanist-turned-poet J. P. Jacobsen, evolutionary thought played a seminal role in the modern breakthrough advocated by the freethinker and literary critic Georg Brandes. A group...... of students and artists assembled around Brandes in the capital of Copenhagen - the only Danish city hosting a university in the late nineteenth century - and used Darwinism in their cultural struggle against what they regarded as reactionary Christian and conservative values which dominated in the country....... At the same time in the village of Askov in rural Jutland, a liberal fraction of the Evangelical-Lutheran State Church, the Grundtvigians, had a stronghold at their high-profile folk high school. Here materialism and Darwinism associated with the Brandes circle were tabooed and later condemned. However...

Allbutt of Leeds and Duchenne de Boulogne: Newly discovered insights on Duchenne by a British neuropsychiatrist.

Science.gov (United States)

Reynolds, E H; Broussolle, E

2018-02-01

It is well-established that Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875), and Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) were the founding fathers of Parisian and French neurology during the second half of the 19th century, although much more is known about Charcot than about his "master" Duchenne. In Britain, Thomas Clifford Allbutt (1836-1925) was Leeds' most distinguished physician of the 19th century, eventually becoming Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Allbutt's 1860-1861 year of postgraduate study in Paris and his friendship with Duchenne profoundly influenced his own contributions to nervous system and mental diseases, partly in collaboration with his colleague James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938) at the nearby West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, Yorkshire. The present report briefly recalls the careers of Duchenne and Allbutt, and also presents a unique account by Allbutt of Duchenne in action at the height of his powers, investigating and defining the previously uncharted field of neuromuscular diseases with the aid of his localized electrization techniques. This account is discussed in relation to: Duchenne's personality and pioneering neurological achievements; the origins of French neurology; and the development of Anglo-French neurological relationships during the 19th century. Interestingly, both Duchenne and Crichton-Browne separately made important and much-appreciated contributions to the third major book by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Exploration and Exploitation of Victorian Science in Darwin's Reading Notebooks

OpenAIRE

Murdock, Jaimie; Allen, Colin; DeDeo, Simon

2015-01-01

Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books listed in his chronologically-organized r...

Darwin and the geological controversies over the steady-state worldview in the 1830s.

Science.gov (United States)

Gohau, Gabriel

2014-01-01

In the first part of this paper, I will show that although Darwin's geological works only covered the first years of his scientific career, these played a non-negligible role in the earth sciences of the mid-nineteenth century. His intellectual proximity with Charles Lyell often made him his disciple. This is indeed the case with respect to debates over 'gradual' soil movements and 'catastrophic' soil movements, and for 'steady-state' cycles as opposed to 'directionalistic' ones. This being said, it is also true that in South America Darwin saw geological processes which were incompatible with Lyell's explanations. It must therefore be recognized that Darwin held a middle-of-the-road position between uniformitarianism (Lyell) and catastrophism (Humbolt and von Buch), at least as far as some geological questions were concerned. In the second part of the paper, debates on geological issues during Darwin's active years will be put in the methodological context of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin's bee-trap: The kinetics of Catasetum, a new world orchid.

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Nicholson, Charles C; Bales, James W; Palmer-Fortune, Joyce E; Nicholson, Robert G

2008-01-01

The orchid genera Catasetum employs a hair-trigger activated, pollen release mechanism, which forcibly attaches pollen sacs onto foraging insects in the New World tropics. This remarkable adaptation was studied extensively by Charles Darwin and he termed this rapid response "sensitiveness." Using high speed video cameras with a frame speed of 1000 fps, this rapid release was filmed and from the subsequent footage, velocity, speed, acceleration, force and kinetic energy were computed.

Looking for Darwin's footprints in the microbial world

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Shapiro, B. Jesse; David, Lawrence A.; Friedman, Jonathan; Alm, Eric J.

2009-03-30

As we observe the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday, microbiologists interested in the application of Darwin's ideas to the microscopic world have a lot to celebrate: an emerging picture of the (mostly microbial) Tree of Life at ever-increasing resolution, an understanding of horizontal gene transfer as a driving force in the evolution of microbes, and thousands of complete genome sequences to help formulate and refine our theories. At the same time, quantitative models of the microevolutionary processes shaping microbial populations remain just out of reach, a point that is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the lack of consensus on how (or even whether) to define bacterial species. We summarize progress and prospects in bacterial population genetics, with an emphasis on detecting the footprint of positive Darwinian selection in microbial genomes.

An Essay on Darwin's Theory and Bergson's Creative Evolution in the Era of NeuroQuantology

OpenAIRE

Başar, Erol; Güntekin, Bahar

2009-01-01

Charles Darwins's evolution theory was surveyed and analyzed by Henri Bergson in his book "Evolution Creatrice" (1907). Bergson described the importance of "intuition" and "cognitive processes" during evolution. The present essay describes the importance of entropy changes during evolution of species and development of cognition and intuition. The importance of Bergson's philosophy in modern sciences is globally explained.

Action of earthworms on flint burial - a return to Darwin's estate

Science.gov (United States)

Kevin R. Butt; Mac Callaham; E. Louise Loudermilk; Rowan Blaik

2016-01-01

For thirty years, from the early 1840s, Charles Darwin documented the disappearance of flints in the grounds of Down House in Kent, at a location originally known as the “Stony Field”. This site (Great Pucklands Meadow – GPM) was visited in 2007 and an experiment set up in this ungrazed grassland. Locally-sourced flints (either large – 12 cm, or small – 5 cm dia.) were...

Darwin and Spencer on the origin of music: is music the food of love?

Science.gov (United States)

Kleinman, Kim

2015-01-01

Finding an evolutionary explanation for the origins of music serves as a rich test of broader ideas on the emergence of mind and the evolution of mental processes. Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer both offered evolutionary explanations for the origins of music, indicating the importance of the question for these two leading nineteenth-century students of "descent with modification." Their discussion unfolded between the publication of Spencer's "The origin and function of music" in 1857 and Darwin's commentaries on music in The Descent of Man in 1871 with an addendum Spencer offered to his original article in light of Darwin's views. They had conflicting views on the lines of causation, asked differing questions, and had fundamentally different approaches. Their exchange laid the foundation for the discussion among contemporary adaptationists and nonadaptationists and contributed to the thinking of those who argue for Mixed Origins of Music or that it is a Transformative Technology of Mind. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dog fight: Darwin as animal advocate in the antivivisection controversy of 1875.

Science.gov (United States)

Feller, David Allan

2009-12-01

The traditional characterization of Charles Darwin as a strong advocate of physiological experimentation on animals was posited in Richard French's Antivivisection and medical science in Victorian England (1975), where French portrayed him as a soldier in Thomas Huxley's efforts to preserve anatomical experimentation on animals unfettered by government regulation. That interpretation relied too much on, inter alia, Huxley's own description of the legislative battles of 1875, and shared many historians' propensity to foster a legacy of Darwin as a leader among a new wave of scientists, even where personal interests might indicate a conflicting story. Animal rights issues concerned more than mere science for Darwin, however, and where debates over other scientific issues failed to inspire Darwin to become publicly active, he readily joined the battle over vivisection, helping to draft legislation which, in many ways, was more protective of animal rights than even the bills proposed by his friend and anti-vivisectionist, Frances Power Cobbe. Darwin may not have officially joined Cobbe's side in the fight, but personal correspondence of the period between 1870 and 1875 reveals a man whose first interest was to protect animals from inhumane treatment, and second to protect the reputations of those men and physiologists who were his friends, and who he believed incapable of inhumane acts. On this latter point he and Cobbe never did reach agreement, but they certainly agreed on the humane treatment of animals, and the need to proscribe various forms of animal experimentation.

Darwin's Error: Using the Story of Pangenesis to Illustrate Aspects of Nature of Science in the Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

McComas, William F.

2012-01-01

This article discusses a number of aspects of the nature of science that can be illustrated by considering the development of pangenesis, a principle proposed by Charles Darwin to describe the rules of inheritance, explain the source of new variation, and solve other natural history puzzles. Pangenesis--although false--can be used to illustrate…

Mate choice and sexual selection: what have we learned since Darwin?

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Adam G; Ratterman, Nicholas L

2009-06-16

Charles Darwin laid the foundation for all modern work on sexual selection in his seminal book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In this work, Darwin fleshed out the mechanism of sexual selection, a hypothesis that he had proposed in The Origin of Species. He went well beyond a simple description of the phenomenon by providing extensive evidence and considering the far-reaching implications of the idea. Here we consider the contributions of Darwin to sexual selection with a particular eye on how far we have progressed in the last 150 years. We focus on 2 key questions in sexual selection. First, why does mate choice evolve at all? And second, what factors determine the strength of mate choice (or intensity of sexual selection) in each sex? Darwin provided partial answers to these questions, and the progress that has been made on both of these topics since his time should be seen as one of the great triumphs of modern evolutionary biology. However, a review of the literature shows that key aspects of sexual selection are still plagued by confusion and disagreement. Many of these areas are complex and will require new theory and empirical data for complete resolution. Overall, Darwin's contributions are still surprisingly relevant to the modern study of sexual selection, so students of evolutionary biology would be well advised to revisit his works. Although we have made significant progress in some areas of sexual selection research, we still have much to accomplish.

Darwin and Lincoln: their legacy of human dignity.

Science.gov (United States)

Earls, Felton

2010-01-01

The legacy of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln is to champion the dignity inherent in every human being. The moment of the bicentennial of their births provides an opportunity to celebrate and reflect on ways they have shaped our understanding and commitment to human rights. The naturalist and the constitutional lawyer, so different in circumstance and discipline, were morally allied in the mission to eradicate slavery. The profound lessons to be extracted from the lives of these two icons bind us to the agonizing reality that nearly 150 years after Gettysburg and the publication of the Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, there remains much work to do toward advancing the security, respect, and equality of our species. This article describes how Darwin and Lincoln's inspiring legacies guided the author's personal choices as a scientist and activist. The essay concludes with a set of questions and challenges that confront us, foremost among which is the need to balance actions in response to the violation of negative rights by actions in the pursuit of positive rights.

Going the whole orang: Darwin, Wallace and the natural history of orangutans.

Science.gov (United States)

van Wyhe, John; Kjærgaard, Peter C

2015-06-01

This article surveys the European discovery and early ideas about orangutans followed by the contrasting experiences with these animals of the co-founders of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. The first non-human great ape that both of them interacted with was the orangutan. They were both profoundly influenced by what they saw, but the contexts of their observations could hardly be more different. Darwin met orangutans in the Zoological Gardens in London while Wallace saw them in the wild in Borneo. In different ways these observations helped shape their views of human evolution and humanity's place in nature. Their findings played a major role in shaping some of the key questions that were pursued in human evolutionary studies during the rest of the nineteenth century. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Introducing Darwinism to Toronto's post-1887 reconstituted medical school.

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Court, John P M

2011-01-01

Charles Darwin's scientific paradigm was largely welcomed in Canadian academic biology and medicine, while reaction among other faculty and laypeople ranged from interest to outrage. In 1874, Ramsay Wright, a Darwinian-era biologist from Edinburgh, was appointed to the University of Toronto's Chair of Natural History. Over his 38-year career Wright integrated the evolutionary perspective into medical and biology teaching without accentuating its controversial source. He also applied the emerging German experimental research model and laboratory technology. This study identifies five categories of scientific and personal influences upon Wright through archival research on biographical sources and his writings.

Inspiration in the harness of daily labor. Darwin, botany, and the triumph of evolution, 1859-1868.

Science.gov (United States)

Bellon, Richard

2011-09-01

Charles Darwin hoped that a large body of working naturalists would embrace evolution after the Origin of Species appeared in late 1859. He was disappointed. His evolutionary ideas at first made painfully little progress in the scientific community. But by 1863 the tide had turned dramatically, and within five years evolution became scientific orthodoxy in Britain. The Origin's reception followed this peculiar trajectory because Darwin had not initially tied its theory to productive original scientific investigation, which left him vulnerable to charges of reckless speculation. The debate changed with his successful application of evolution to original problems, most notably orchid fertilization, the subject of a well-received book in 1862. Most of Darwin's colleagues found the argument of the Origin convincing when they realized that it functioned productively in the day-to-day work of science-and not before. The conceptual force of the Origin, however outwardly persuasive, acquired full scientific legitimacy only when placed "in the harness of daily labour".

Exploration and exploitation of Victorian science in Darwin's reading notebooks.

Science.gov (United States)

Murdock, Jaimie; Allen, Colin; DeDeo, Simon

2017-02-01

Search in an environment with an uncertain distribution of resources involves a trade-off between exploitation of past discoveries and further exploration. This extends to information foraging, where a knowledge-seeker shifts between reading in depth and studying new domains. To study this decision-making process, we examine the reading choices made by one of the most celebrated scientists of the modern era: Charles Darwin. From the full-text of books listed in his chronologically-organized reading journals, we generate topic models to quantify his local (text-to-text) and global (text-to-past) reading decisions using Kullback-Liebler Divergence, a cognitively-validated, information-theoretic measure of relative surprise. Rather than a pattern of surprise-minimization, corresponding to a pure exploitation strategy, Darwin's behavior shifts from early exploitation to later exploration, seeking unusually high levels of cognitive surprise relative to previous eras. These shifts, detected by an unsupervised Bayesian model, correlate with major intellectual epochs of his career as identified both by qualitative scholarship and Darwin's own self-commentary. Our methods allow us to compare his consumption of texts with their publication order. We find Darwin's consumption more exploratory than the culture's production, suggesting that underneath gradual societal changes are the explorations of individual synthesis and discovery. Our quantitative methods advance the study of cognitive search through a framework for testing interactions between individual and collective behavior and between short- and long-term consumption choices. This novel application of topic modeling to characterize individual reading complements widespread studies of collective scientific behavior. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Darwin as a geologist in Africa – dispelling the myths and unravelling a confused knot

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sharad Master

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Two myths persist concerning the role played by Charles Darwin as a geologist in Africa during his epic voyage around the world (1831–1836. The first myth is that Darwin was a completely self-taught geologist, with no formal training. The second myth is that it was Darwin who finally solved the problem of the granite–schist contact at the famous Sea Point coastal exposures in Cape Town, after deliberately setting out to prove his predecessors wrong. These myths are challenged by the now ample evidence that Darwin had excellent help in his geological education from the likes of Robert Jameson, John Henslow and Adam Sedgwick. The story of Darwin and his predecessors at the Sea Point granite contact has become confused, and even conflated, with previous descriptions by Basil Hall (1813 and Clark Abel (1818. Here, the historical record is unravelled and set straight, and it is shown from the evidence of his notebooks that Darwin was quite unaware of the outcrops in Cape Town. His erudite account of the contact was a result of the 8 years spent in writing and correspondence after his return to England and not because of his brilliant insights on the outcrop, as the myth would have it. While there has been little to indicate Darwin’s landfalls in Africa, a new plaque now explains the geology of the Sea Point Contact, and includes a drawing of Darwin’s ship, the Beagle, and quotes from his work.

76 FR 38302 - Safety Zone; Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA

Science.gov (United States)

2011-06-30

... the Town of Cape Charles will sponsor a fireworks display on the shoreline of the navigable waters of...-AA00 Safety Zone; Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA AGENCY: Coast Guard... navigable waters of Cape Charles City Harbor in Cape Charles, VA in support of the Fourth of July Fireworks...

76 FR 27970 - Safety Zone; Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA.

Science.gov (United States)

2011-05-13

... Charles will sponsor a fireworks display on the shoreline of the navigable waters of Cape Charles City...[deg]01'30'' W (NAD 1983). This safety zone will be established in the vicinity of Cape Charles, VA...-AA00 Safety Zone; Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA. AGENCY: Coast Guard...

Dr Charles Morehead MD (Edinburgh), FRCP (1807-1882): Pioneer in medical education.

Science.gov (United States)

Pandya, Sunil K

2015-05-01

Charles Morehead studied medicine in Edinburgh and Paris. Among his teachers were George Jardine (1742-1827) (moral philosophy), Professor William Pulteney Alison (1790-1859) (medicine), Pierre Louis (1787-1872) and René Laennec (1781-1826). He joined as Assistant Surgeon in the Bombay Medical Service of the East India Company and was appointed to the staff of Governor Sir Robert Grant (1779-1838). Grant and Morehead founded the Grant Medical College and Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (1811-1877) Hospital in Bombay. Morehead established standards of medical education at these institutions far superior to those in Calcutta and Madras and, in some ways, to those in Britain. His emphasis on discipline, regular attendance, learning medicine at the bedside, the maintenance of detailed records on all patients and thorough evaluation of the progress made by students were salutary. While in London to recover his health, he wrote his classic book Clinical Researches on Disease in India for Indian doctors and those from Britain entering the Indian Medical Services. He lived in Edinburgh after retirement from India but continued to help teachers and students at his institutions in Bombay. © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.

The prominent absence of Alfred Russel Wallace at the Darwin anniversaries in Germany in 1909, 1959 and 2009.

Science.gov (United States)

Hossfeld, Uwe; Olsson, Lennart

2013-12-01

It is well known that the contribution of Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913) to the development of the "Darwinian" principle of natural selection has often been neglected. Here we focus on how the three anniversaries to celebrate the origin of the Darwin-Wallace theory in Germany in 1909, in 1959 in the divided country, as well as in 2009, have represented Charles Robert Darwin's and Alfred Russell Wallace's contributions. We have analyzed books and proceedings volumes related to these anniversaries, and the main result is that Wallace was almost always ignored, or only mentioned in passing. In 1909, Ernst Haeckel gave a talk in Jena, later published under the title The worldview of Darwin and Lamarck (Das Weltbild von Darwin und Lamarck), but not as the Darwin-Wallace concept. Haeckel mentions Wallace only once. In two important proceedings volumes from the 1959 anniversaries, Wallace was ignored. The only fair treatment of Wallace is given in another book, a collection of documents edited by Gerhard Heberer, for which the author selected nine key documents and reprinted excerpts (1959). Three of them were articles by Wallace, including the Sarawak- and Ternate-papers of 1855 and 1858, respectively. An analysis of the dominant themes during the celebrations of 2009 shows that none of the six topics had much to do with Wallace and his work. Thus, the tendency to exclude Alfred Russell Wallace is an international phenomenon, and largely attributable to the "Darwin industry".

Darwins begejstring

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

Ingen anden videnskabelig teori har som Darwins evolutionsteori skabt så megen debat uden for videnskabelige kredse. I år kan vi fejre både Darwins 200 års fødselsdag og 150-året for hans hovedværk Om Arternes Oprindelse. Artiklen kan læses på: http://www.aktuelnat.au.dk/fileadmin/an/nr-1/an1......darwins-bg.pdf....

77 FR 29929 - Safety Zone; Town of Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA

Science.gov (United States)

2012-05-21

... section of this notice. Basis and Purpose On July 4, 2012 the Town of Cape Charles will sponsor a...-AA00 Safety Zone; Town of Cape Charles Fireworks, Cape Charles Harbor, Cape Charles, VA AGENCY: Coast... temporary safety zone on the waters of Cape Charles City Harbor in Cape Charles, VA in support of the Fourth...

Darwinism and environmentalism

OpenAIRE

Garvey, Brian

2011-01-01

What implications does Darwinism have for our attitude towards the environment? At first sight, it might look as though Darwinism is not friendly towards environmental concerns. Darwinism is often thought to paint a picture of ruthless competition between, as well as within, species. Moreover, Darwinism may be thought to encourage a view of the environment as something to be exploited for self-interested gain. The present paper proposes a more positive view. It will be argued that mutual bene...

Darwin's triggering mechanism of volcano eruptions

Science.gov (United States)

Galiev, Shamil

2010-05-01

Charles Darwin wrote that ‘… the elevation of many hundred square miles of territory near Concepcion is part of the same phenomenon, with that splashing up, if I may so call it, of volcanic matter through the orifices in the Cordillera at the moment of the shock;…' and ‘…a power, I may remark, which acts in paroxysmal upheavals like that of Concepcion, and in great volcanic eruptions,…'. Darwin reports that ‘…several of the great chimneys in the Cordillera of central Chile commenced a fresh period of activity ….' In particular, Darwin reported on four-simultaneous large eruptions from the following volcanoes: Robinson Crusoe, Minchinmavida, Cerro Yanteles and Peteroa (we cite the Darwin's sentences following his The Voyage of the Beagle and researchspace. auckland. ac. nz/handle/2292/4474). Let us consider these eruptions taking into account the volcano shape and the conduit. Three of the volcanoes (Minchinmavida (2404 m), Cerro Yanteles (2050 m), and Peteroa (3603 m)) are stratovolcanos and are formed of symmetrical cones with steep sides. Robinson Crusoe (922 m) is a shield volcano and is formed of a cone with gently sloping sides. They are not very active. We may surmise, that their vents had a sealing plug (vent fill) in 1835. All these volcanoes are conical. These common features are important for Darwin's triggering model, which is discussed below. The vent fill material, usually, has high level of porosity and a very low tensile strength and can easily be fragmented by tension waves. The action of a severe earthquake on the volcano base may be compared with a nuclear blast explosion of the base. It is known, that after a underground nuclear explosion the vertical motion and the surface fractures in a tope of mountains were observed. The same is related to the propagation of waves in conical elements. After the explosive load of the base. the tip may break and fly off at high velocity. Analogous phenomenon may be generated as a result of a

Educação integral: notas sobre Charles Fourier, Saint Simon e Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

José Damiro Moraes

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Este artigo procura contribuir para as discussões em torno do conceito histórico de educação integral, tendo em vista que existem algumas lacunas em torno desse tema. Aqui iremos abordar os conceitos de educação integral no pensamento dos intelectuais: Claude-Henri de Rouvroy ou Conde de Saint-Simon (1760-1825, François Marie Charles Fourier (1772-1837 e Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865. A pesquisa utiliza as obras dos autores escritas/publicadas no século XIX. A metodologia procura entender a produção intelectual de maneira dialética e dentro do contexto histórico em que foi produzida. Indicamos como conclusões que Proudhon, Saint-Simon e Charles Fourier, consideravam no processo educacional que a parte literária estaria diretamente vinculada com a científica, unindo teoria e prática. Podemos aventar que as contribuições desses pensadores foram importante nas reflexões educacionais e na defesa de uma educação comprometida com a transformação social presente no pensamento socialista e no movimento operário do século XIX e XX.

Marine Sciences: from natural history to ecology and back, on Darwin's shoulders

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Ferdinando Boero

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The naturalist Charles Darwin founded modern ecology, considering in a single conceptual framework the manifold aspects regarding the organization of life at various levels of complexity and its relationship with the physical world. The development of powerful analytical tools led to abandon Darwin's natural history and to transform naturalists, as Darwin labelled himself, into the practitioners of more focused disciplines, aimed at tackling specific problems that considered the various aspects of the organization of life in great detail but, also, in isolation from each other. Among the various disciplines that stemmed from the Darwinian method, ecology was further split into many branches, and marine ecology was no exception. The compartmentalization of the marine realm into several sub-domains (e.g., plankton, benthos, nekton led to neglect of the connections linking the various parts that were separated for the ease of analyses that, in this way, prevented synthetic visions. The way marine sciences were studied also led to separate visions depending on the employed tools, so that ship-based biological oceanography developed almost separately from marine station-based marine biology. The necessity of putting together such concepts as biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is rapidly leading to synthetic approaches that re-discover the historical nature of ecology, leading to the dawn of a new natural history.

Alberto Lista’s El Espectador sevillano (1809: an example of revolutionary discourse? | El Espectador sevillano de Alberto Lista (1809: ¿un discurso revolucionario?

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Claude Morange

2011-12-01

Full Text Available El Espectador sevillano is a journal that was edited by Alberto Lista between 1809 (2 October and 1810 (29 January. It happened to be published in Seville for the town had just become the capital city of unoccupied Spain. El Espectador sevillano provides us with a systematic account of the fundaments of political liberalism as a doctrine that led to the writing of the Constitution of Cadiz a few months after the termination of the journal. However little attention has been paid to El Espectador sevillano despite it is being one of the most political influential journals at that time. In this paper, we fill in this research gap by locating El Espectador sevillano within the complexity of the vibrant political debate that took place in Seville during this period, in order to assess to what extend Lista’s thinking in 1809 can be labelled as revolutionary. | El Espectador sevillano, redactado por Alberto Lista, se publicó en Sevilla del 2 de octubre de 1809 al 29 de enero de 1810. Aunque se trata de uno de los periódicos más importantes del momento, se le ha estudiado poco. Redactado en la ciudad que, por las circunstancias bélicas, había pasado a ser capital de la España libre, ofrece una exposición sistemática de los fundamentos de la doctrina política liberal, que se plasmarían algunos meses después en la Constitución de Cádiz. En estas breves reflexiones, se trata de situar la publicación en el complejo e intenso debate de ideas de que fue entonces teatro Sevilla, para tratar de determinar hasta qué punto puede calificarse de revolucionario el pensamiento del Lista de 1809.

Explosive Volcanic Activity at Extreme Depths: Evidence from the Charles Darwin Volcanic Field, Cape Verdes

Science.gov (United States)

Kwasnitschka, T.; Devey, C. W.; Hansteen, T. H.; Freundt, A.; Kutterolf, S.

2013-12-01

Volcanic eruptions on the deep sea floor have traditionally been assumed to be non-explosive as the high-pressure environment should greatly inhibit steam-driven explosions. Nevertheless, occasional evidence both from (generally slow-) spreading axes and intraplate seamounts has hinted at explosive activity at large water depths. Here we present evidence from a submarine field of volcanic cones and pit craters called Charles Darwin Volcanic Field located at about 3600 m depth on the lower southwestern slope of the Cape Verdean Island of Santo Antão. We examined two of these submarine volcanic edifices (Tambor and Kolá), each featuring a pit crater of 1 km diameter, using photogrammetric reconstructions derived from ROV-based imaging followed by 3D quantification using a novel remote sensing workflow, aided by sampling. The measured and calculated parameters of physical volcanology derived from the 3D model allow us, for the first time, to make quantitative statements about volcanic processes on the deep seafloor similar to those generated from land-based field observations. Tambor cone, which is 2500 m wide and 250 m high, consists of dense, probably monogenetic medium to coarse-grained volcaniclastic and pyroclastic rocks that are highly fragmented, probably as a result of thermal and viscous granulation upon contact with seawater during several consecutive cycles of activity. Tangential joints in the outcrops indicate subsidence of the crater floor after primary emplacement. Kolá crater, which is 1000 m wide and 160 m deep, appears to have been excavated in the surrounding seafloor and shows stepwise sagging features interpreted as ring fractures on the inner flanks. Lithologically, it is made up of a complicated succession of highly fragmented deposits, including spheroidal juvenile lapilli, likely formed by spray granulation. It resembles a maar-type deposit found on land. The eruption apparently entrained blocks of MORB-type gabbroic country rocks with

The electric storm of November 1882

Science.gov (United States)

Love, Jeffrey J.

2018-01-01

In November 1882, an intense magnetic storm related to a large sunspot group caused widespread interference to telegraph and telephone systems and provided spectacular and unusual auroral displays. The (ring current) storm time disturbance index for this storm reached maximum −Dst ≈ 386 nT, comparable to Halloween storm of 29–31 October 2003, but from 17 to 20 November the aa midlatitude geomagnetic disturbance index averaged 214.25 nT, the highest 4 day level of disturbance since the beginning of aa index in 1868. This storm contributed to scientists' understanding of the reality of solar‐terrestrial interaction. Past occurrences of magnetic storms, like that of November 1882, can inform modern evaluations of the deleterious effects that a magnetic superstorm might have on technological systems of importance to society.

48 CFR 1809.206-70 - Small businesses.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations System 6 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 true Small businesses. 1809.206...-70 Small businesses. If a small business otherwise eligible for award has been placed in a special... that the small business does not appear to have the capacity to perform, the certificate of competency...

DIE MAPOCH.OORLOG,1882-1883

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Toe genl Joubert Nyabela teen November 1882 opdrag gegee' het om Mampuru te help op- spoor, het hy geweier, Hy het Mampuru trouens beskerming verleen, Gevolglik het Joubert en sy. 16 kommando direk tee'n die Ndzundza opgetrek, waarop 'n oorlog gevolg het wat net langer as agt maande geduur het en die ZAR ...

Charles Lyell and scientific thinking in geology

Science.gov (United States)

Virgili, Carmina

2007-07-01

Charles Lyell (1797-1875) was born at Kinnordy, Scotland. His father, an amateur botanist, and his grandfather, a navigator, gave him very soon a taste for the observation of the Nature. He went to the Oxford University to study classical literature, but he also followed the geological course of William Buckland. After having been employed as jurist for some years, in 1827 he decided on a career of geologist and held the chair of geology of the King's College of London, from 1831 on. He was a contemporary of Cuvier, Darwin, von Humboldt, Hutton, Lavoisier, and was elected 'membre correspondant' of the 'Académie des sciences, France', in January 1862. Charles Lyell is one of the eminent geologists who initiated the scientific thinking in geology, in which his famous volumes of the Principles of Geology were taken as the authority. These reference volumes are based on multiple observations and field works collected during numerous fieldtrips in western Europe (principally Spain, France, and Italy) and North America. To his name are attached, among others: ( i) the concept of uniformitarism (or actualism), which was opposed to the famous catastrophism, in vogue at that time, and which may be summarized by the expression "The present is the key to the past"; ( ii) the division of the Tertiary in three series denominated Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, due to the study of the age of strata by fossil faunas; ( iii) the theory according to which the orogenesis of a mountain chain, as the Pyrenees, results from different pulsations on very long time scales and was not induced by a unique pulsation during a short and intense period. The uniformity of the laws of Nature is undeniably a principle Charles Lyell was the first to state clearly and to apply to the study of the whole Earth's crust, which opened a new era in geology.

Systemic darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt

2008-08-19

Darwin's 19th century evolutionary theory of descent with modification through natural selection opened up a multidimensional and integrative conceptual space for biology. We explore three dimensions of this space: explanatory pattern, levels of selection, and degree of difference among units of the same type. Each dimension is defined by a respective pair of poles: law and narrative explanation, organismic and hierarchical selection, and variational and essentialist thinking. As a consequence of conceptual debates in the 20th century biological sciences, the poles of each pair came to be seen as mutually exclusive opposites. A significant amount of 21st century research focuses on systems (e.g., genomic, cellular, organismic, and ecological/global). Systemic Darwinism is emerging in this context. It follows a "compositional paradigm" according to which complex systems and their hierarchical networks of parts are the focus of biological investigation. Through the investigation of systems, Systemic Darwinism promises to reintegrate each dimension of Darwin's original logical space. Moreover, this ideally and potentially unified theory of biological ontology coordinates and integrates a plurality of mathematical biological theories (e.g., self-organization/structure, cladistics/history, and evolutionary genetics/function). Integrative Systemic Darwinism requires communal articulation from a plurality of perspectives. Although it is more general than these, it draws on previous advances in Systems Theory, Systems Biology, and Hierarchy Theory. Systemic Darwinism would greatly further bioengineering research and would provide a significantly deeper and more critical understanding of biological reality.

Darwin's Sacred Cause

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

As we are being flooded by Darwin lollipops, t-shirts, quills and stamps it is becoming increasingly difficult to be heard or seen in the commercialised celebration in 2009. Some are in the business for the science, but a lot are in it for profit. Accordingly, the Darwin industry has left the hands...... of scholarly specialists and been appropriated by money makers. One could not help thinking about this as, in the autumn of 2008, the publisher began hyping Darwin's Sacred Cause as ‘one of the major contributions to the worldwide Darwin anniversary celebrations in 2009' Udgivelsesdato: February...

'The art itself is nature': Darwin, domestic varieties and the scientific revolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Inkpen, S Andrew

2014-01-01

Common to both the scientific and Darwinian revolutions were discussions challenging the distinction between art and nature. Was art a part of nature? Could art be used as a model for nature? This intellectual congruence, however, is more than just nominal. Charles Darwin and Asa Gray, for example, were well-aware of the 17th century debates which preceded them through the works of such revered English writers as William Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. Furthermore, they used their understandings of these debates to inform and express their own thinking about the relation between artificial and natural selection. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwins øje

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hedin, Gry

2012-01-01

I artiklen diskuteres beskrivelsen af øjne og perception i J.P. Jacobsens roman Niels Lyhne (1880). Det analyseres det, hvordan Jacobsen håndterer de ændringer på dette felt, som Darwins udviklingshistorie bidrog til, og som udforskedes i detaljer af den tyske fysiolog Hermann von Helmholtz. Der...... forholdet mellem J.P. Jacobsens litterære værker og hans engagement som oversætter og formidler af Darwin fra en ny vinkel. I stedet for at se på tematiske sammenfald med Darwin undersøges de metodologiske og epistemologiske. Herved bliver det tydeligt, at Jacobsen ikke bare indoptager og formidler Darwin...

Darwin as Metaphor

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Emily Ballou

2010-10-01

Full Text Available In response to Steven Shapin’s query in the 'London Review of Books', 'Why such homage?', 'I look at Darwin as a metaphor for creativity, and how Darwin, as evidenced in his own metaphysical notebooks, imagined and performed acts of creation in his pursuit of science. Many of Darwin’s ideas were first conceptualised imaginatively, instinctively almost. In this way, he created concepts, rather than simply discovering them. I include a brief discussion of my experience of rendering Darwin and his life into a portrait in 75 poems and also a discussion of the bio-pic Creation'. As species change over time, but are still related, so a portrait of Darwin is a descendent of the historical man and his words, but is no longer the historical man. 

Journalism and Literature in the Egyptian Revolution of 1882

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

José Maurício Saldanha Álvarez

2014-09-01

Full Text Available This article analyzes the news reports written by the Portuguese novelist and journalist Eça de Queirós about the crisis in 1881-1882 that resulted in the bombing of Alexandria, Egypt, by a British fleet. First, following Barbie Zelizer, we examine the communication of this historical event by analyzing how the news reports covering the event were written, taking into account the literary form commonly used during the period. For Zelizer, figures could not be trusted, and the plot and storyline were preferable. Second, as proposed by Hallin and Mancini, we analyze media practices during the period and compare the practices of the British and Luso-Brazilian print media. Eça appropriated information broadcasts by British journalists and reformulated them for his readers, emphasizing the key issues that lurked beneath the events of 1881-1882. Third, we analyze how the Egyptian army and Colonel Arabi went from being demonized to a position of heroes in modern Egypt through reports by the Brazilian periodical Gazeta de Noticias that were published in 1882 in Rio de Janeiro and were considered the culmination of its journalistic activities.

Economic Darwinism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sloth, Birgitte; Whitta-Jacobsen, Hans Jørgen

2011-01-01

We define an evolutionary process of "economic Darwinism" for playing the field, symmetric games. The process captures two forces. One is "economic selection": if current behavior leads to payoff differences, behavior yielding lowest payoff has strictly positive probability of being replaced...... in the literature. Using this result, we demonstrate that generally under positive (negative) externalities, economic Darwinism implies even more under- (over-)activity than does Nash equilibrium....

Darwins aktualitet

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2009-01-01

- han får os til at diskutere os selv. Uddrag af PETER C. KJÆRGAARDs tale ved åbningen af Darwin-udstillingen på Statens Naturhistoriske Museum d. 4. februar. Udgivelsesdato: Marts......- han får os til at diskutere os selv. Uddrag af PETER C. KJÆRGAARDs tale ved åbningen af Darwin-udstillingen på Statens Naturhistoriske Museum d. 4. februar. Udgivelsesdato: Marts...

Responding to soil erosion in Spain: from Charles Darwin to John Thornes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Imeson, A.

2009-01-01

During a discussion of the European Soil Framework Directive last year, John Thornes commented on the paradox that although there was much scientific progress in understanding desertification and erosion, relatively few scientists were responding to the opportunity of responding. Most scientists passively accept the situation of little effective soil and land governance in Europe John Thornes thought that one difficulty is that researchers work in isolation and assume someone else is caring about the big picture. those looking after the big picture are in fact managing soil and land from the perspectives of things such as rural poverty reduction and food security and interventions for farmer's. These are in themselves excellent points of view but they need to be balanced and limited by guidelines provided from the perspective of the requirements of medium and long term soil conservation and protection. There is an absolute need for a European Soil Conservation service as there is in the United States and china. As Darwin said when looking at the increase in population of animals in South America: There must be something limiting growth. Now the only thing limiting growth in many places might be erosion and desertification. (Author) 13 refs.

Deceived by orchids: sex, science, fiction and Darwin.

Science.gov (United States)

Endersby, Jim

2016-06-01

Between 1916 and 1927, botanists in several countries independently resolved three problems that had mystified earlier naturalists - including Charles Darwin: how did the many species of orchid that did not produce nectar persuade insects to pollinate them? Why did some orchid flowers seem to mimic insects? And why should a native British orchid suffer 'attacks' from a bee? Half a century after Darwin's death, these three mysteries were shown to be aspects of a phenomenon now known as pseudocopulation, whereby male insects are deceived into attempting to mate with the orchid's flowers, which mimic female insects; the males then carry the flower's pollen with them when they move on to try the next deceptive orchid. Early twentieth-century botanists were able to see what their predecessors had not because orchids (along with other plants) had undergone an imaginative re-creation: Darwin's science was appropriated by popular interpreters of science, including the novelist Grant Allen; then H.G. Wells imagined orchids as killers (inspiring a number of imitators), to produce a genre of orchid stories that reflected significant cultural shifts, not least in the presentation of female sexuality. It was only after these changes that scientists were able to see plants as equipped with agency, actively able to pursue their own, cunning reproductive strategies - and to outwit animals in the process. This paper traces the movement of a set of ideas that were created in a context that was recognizably scientific; they then became popular non-fiction, then popular fiction, and then inspired a new science, which in turn inspired a new generation of fiction writers. Long after clear barriers between elite and popular science had supposedly been established in the early twentieth century, they remained porous because a variety of imaginative writers kept destabilizing them. The fluidity of the boundaries between makers, interpreters and publics of scientific knowledge was a highly

Beating the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence: Darwin, social Darwinism and the Turks.

Science.gov (United States)

Bilgili, Alper

2017-10-01

Despite the vast literature on Darwinism and race, the way in which Darwin's opinions on race were received and used by non-Western circles has been little studied. In the case of the Turks, Darwin's comments have been related to British-Ottoman relations, and Darwin was blamed for stoking anti-Turkish sentiment within Europe. This allegedly resulted in the British occupation of Egypt in the 19th century, the demise of the Ottoman Empire, as well as contemporary Neo-Nazi arson attacks in Germany which targeted Turkish migrants. Consequently, Turkish anti-Darwinists perceive Darwinism to be not merely a false scientific theory, but also a political-ideological instrument of Western hegemony wielded against Turkey and the Islamic World. Turkish Darwinists who responded to those claims, on the other hand, presented Darwin as an egalitarian who could overcome the prejudices of his social class. Further scrutiny, however, proves both accounts to be over-simplistic. This paper aims to throw some light on the context within which Darwin expressed his opinions on Turks and thus contribute to the broader discussion of the relationship between Darwinism and race. More importantly, it aims to familiarise Western readers with one of the cultures of creationism which is very little known, despite its great impact on Muslim masses. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darwin without borders? Looking at 'generalised Darwinism' through the prism of the 'hourglass model'.

Science.gov (United States)

Levit, Georgy S; Hossfeld, Uwe

2011-12-01

This article critically analyzes the arguments of the 'generalized Darwinism' recently proposed for the analysis of social-economical systems. We argue that 'generalized Darwinism' is both restrictive and empty. It is restrictive because it excludes alternative (non-selectionist) evolutionary mechanisms such as orthogenesis, saltationism and mutationism without any examination of their suitability for modeling socio-economic processes and ignoring their important roles in the development of contemporary evolutionary theory. It is empty, because it reduces Darwinism to an abstract triple-principle scheme (variation, selection and inheritance) thus ignoring the actual structure of Darwinism as a complex and dynamic theoretical structure inseparable from a very detailed system of theoretical constraints. Arguing against 'generalised Darwinism' we present our vision of the history of evolutionary biology with the help of the 'hourglass model' reflecting the internal dynamic of competing theories of evolution.

Vitalism and the Darwin Debate

Science.gov (United States)

Henderson, James

2012-01-01

There are currently both scientific and public debates surrounding Darwinism. In the scientific debate, the details of evolution are in dispute, but not the central thesis of Darwin's theory; in the public debate, Darwinism itself is questioned. I concentrate on the public debate because of its direct impact on education in the United States. Some…

Responding to soil erosion in Spain: from Charles Darwin to John Thornes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Imeson, A.

2009-07-01

During a discussion of the European Soil Framework Directive last year, John Thornes commented on the paradox that although there was much scientific progress in understanding desertification and erosion, relatively few scientists were responding to the opportunity of responding. Most scientists passively accept the situation of little effective soil and land governance in Europe John Thornes thought that one difficulty is that researchers work in isolation and assume someone else is caring about the big picture. those looking after the big picture are in fact managing soil and land from the perspectives of things such as rural poverty reduction and food security and interventions for farmer's. These are in themselves excellent points of view but they need to be balanced and limited by guidelines provided from the perspective of the requirements of medium and long term soil conservation and protection. There is an absolute need for a European Soil Conservation service as there is in the United States and china. As Darwin said when looking at the increase in population of animals in South America: There must be something limiting growth. Now the only thing limiting growth in many places might be erosion and desertification. (Author) 13 refs.

Charles River

Science.gov (United States)

Information on the efforts of the US EPA, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the municipalities within the Charles River Watershed and nongovernmental organizations to improve the water quality of the Charles River.

Spirit Beside 'Home Plate,' Sol 1809

Science.gov (United States)

2009-01-01

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Spirit used its navigation camera to take the images assembled into this 120-degree view southward after a short drive during the 1,809th Martian day, or sol, of Spirit's mission on the surface of Mars (February 3, 2009). Spirit had driven about 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) that sol, continuing a clockwise route around a low plateau called 'Home Plate.' In this image, the rocks visible above the rovers' solar panels are on the slope at the northern edge of Home Plate. This view is presented as a cylindrical projection with geometric seam correction.

Stability of congruent Darwin ellipsoids

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tassoul, M.

1975-01-01

The problem of synchronous oscillations of congruent Darwin ellipsoids is reconsidered. Contrary to results obtained by Chandrasekhar, it is shown that along a Darwin sequence the configurations remain stable with respect to ellipsoidal disturbances until they become too closely spaced. The precise limit which separates stable from unstable systems is found. Apart from some minor differences the Darwin sequence is the exact analog of the Roche sequence

Darwin and Darwinism: the (alleged) social implications of the origin of species.

Science.gov (United States)

Orr, H Allen

2009-11-01

Most scientific theories, even revolutionary ones, change the practice of a particular science but have few consequences for culture or society at large. But Darwinism, it has often been said, is different in this respect. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, many have claimed that Darwinism has a number of profound social implications. Here, I briefly consider three of these: the economic, the political, and the religious. I suggest that, for the most part, these supposed implications have been misconstrued or exaggerated. Indeed, it is reasonably clear that the chain of implication sometimes primarily ran in the opposite direction-from, for instance, economics and political theory to Darwinism.

Charles Babbage

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Home; Journals; Resonance – Journal of Science Education. Charles Babbage. Articles written in Resonance – Journal of Science Education. Volume 7 Issue 6 June 2002 pp 88-93 Classics. Of the Analytical Engine · Charles Babbage · More Details Fulltext PDF ...

Darwinism: Evolution or Revolution?

Science.gov (United States)

Holt, Niles R.

1989-01-01

Maintains that Darwin's theory of evolution was more than a science versus religion debate; rather it was a revolutionary concept that influenced numerous social and political ideologies and movements throughout western history. Traces the impact of Darwin's work historically, utilizing a holistic approach. (RW)

The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part I: Darwin, Darwinism, and the Mutationists.

Science.gov (United States)

Beatty, John

2016-12-01

This is the first of a two-part essay on the history of debates concerning the creativity of natural selection, from Darwin through the evolutionary synthesis and up to the present. Here I focus on the mid-late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, with special emphasis on early Darwinism and its critics, the self-styled "mutationists." The second part focuses on the evolutionary synthesis and some of its critics, especially the "neutralists" and "neo-mutationists." Like Stephen Gould, I consider the creativity of natural selection to be a key component of what has traditionally counted as "Darwinism." I argue that the creativity of natural selection is best understood in terms of (1) selection initiating evolutionary change, and (2) selection being responsible for the presence of the variation it acts upon, for example by directing the course of variation. I consider the respects in which both of these claims sound non-Darwinian, even though they have long been understood by supporters and critics alike to be virtually constitutive of Darwinism.

Darwin-industrien i højt gear

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærgaard, Peter C.

2008-01-01

Darwin-industrien i højt gear. Næste år bliver et 'Darwin-år' - både tilhængere og kritikere gør sig klar. Udgivelsesdato: 12. december......Darwin-industrien i højt gear. Næste år bliver et 'Darwin-år' - både tilhængere og kritikere gør sig klar. Udgivelsesdato: 12. december...

Darwin in disguise.

Science.gov (United States)

Derry, J F

2009-02-01

Darwinism appears in many more academic areas than just evolutionary biology. New disciplines are created out of its fusion with existing fields of study. However, this practise is criticised for a lack of evidence-based justification, and for adopting gene-oriented reductionism in the social sciences. This article briefly considers seven examples of new disciplines for which Darwinism has been appropriated. In each case, succinct background information precedes quotes provided for this purpose by a leading researcher.

Characters named Charles or Charley in novels by Charles Dickens.

Science.gov (United States)

Barry, Herbert

2007-10-01

12 fictional characters named Charles or Charley are contained in eight of the 14 completed novels by Charles Dickens. Most of the author's namesakes have humorous attributes, an unusually close relationship with one or more other characters, and a happy subsequent life. Three stages of the author's adult life are youthful, mature, and after separation from his wife. The fictional namesakes are most humorous in the author's youthful stage and least humorous after separation from his wife. The 12 fictional namesakes of Charles Dickens are compared with the two fictional namesakes of Jane Austen.

Lloyd Morgan's theory of instinct: from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism.

Science.gov (United States)

Richards, R J

1977-01-01

Darwin's proposal of two sources of instinct--natural selection and inherited habit--fostered among late nineteenth century evolutionists a variety of conflicting notions concerning the mechanisms of evolution. The British comparative psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan was a cardinal figure in restructuring the orthodox Darwinian conception to relieve the confusion besetting it and to meet the demands of the new biology of Weismann. This paper traces the development of Morgan's ideas about instinct against the background of his philosophic assumptions and the views of instinct theorists from Darwin and Romanes to McDougall and Lorenz.

Darwin's legacy and the study of primate visual communication.

Science.gov (United States)

de Waal, Frans B M

2003-12-01

After Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, we had to wait 60 years before the theme of animal expressions was picked up by another astute observer. In 1935, Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts published a detailed comparison of the expressive behavior of a juvenile chimpanzee and of her own child. After Kohts, we had to wait until the 1960s for modern ethological analyses of primate facial and gestural communication. Again, the focus was on the chimpanzee, but ethograms on other primates appeared as well. Our understanding of the range of expressions in other primates is at present far more advanced than that in Darwin's time. A strong social component has been added: instead of focusing on the expressions per se, they are now often classified according to the social situations in which they typically occur. Initially, quantitative analyses were sequential (i.e., concerned with temporal associations between behavior patterns), and they avoided the language of emotions. I will discuss some of this early work, including my own on the communicative repertoire of the bonobo, a close relative of the chimpanzee (and ourselves). I will provide concrete examples to make the point that there is a much richer matrix of contexts possible than the common behavioral categories of aggression, sex, fear, play, and so on. Primate signaling is a form of negotiation, and previous classifications have ignored the specifics of what animals try to achieve with their exchanges. There is also increasing evidence for signal conventionalization in primates, especially the apes, in both captivity and the field. This process results in group-specific or "cultural" communication patterns.

Ripensare Darwin? Di ex‐aptations e neotenie. E di Topolino, Pippo e simpatiche salamandre messicane

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

AMODIO, PAOLO

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Rethinking Darwin? About Ex‐aptations and Neotenies. Concerning Mickey Mouse, Goofy and likeable mexican Salamanders The theory of evolution by natural selection of Charles Darwin, whose first general exposure dates back to 1859, with the publication of the Origin of Species, is still a matter of intense debate among natural sciences’ scholars and philosophers. After the merger of Darwinian evolutionary research program with the theory of heredity of Gregor Mendel, the mathematical form of population genetics and the analysis of paleontological data (Modern Synthesis and the the important contributions of post-Darwinian authors such as S.J. Gould and N. Eldredge we are entering a new era of great discoveries and news. On the one hand, new data from genetics and paleoanthropology, on the other hand the impetuous development of some fields of applied science such as nanobiotechnology, genetic engineering and synthetic biology put us into the need and the urgency to underline, once again, the relevance and the extraordinary heuristic power of Darwinian research program, an even greater urgency since some authors have announced that we would be at a time to access a post-Darwinian and post-evolutionary era in which man as we actually know it is about to disappear.

Darwin revisited: The vagus nerve is a causal element in controlling recognition of other's emotions.

Science.gov (United States)

Colzato, Lorenza S; Sellaro, Roberta; Beste, Christian

2017-07-01

Charles Darwin proposed that via the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve, emotional facial expressions are evolved, adaptive and serve a crucial communicative function. In line with this idea, the later-developed polyvagal theory assumes that the vagus nerve is the key phylogenetic substrate that regulates emotional and social behavior. The polyvagal theory assumes that optimal social interaction, which includes the recognition of emotion in faces, is modulated by the vagus nerve. So far, in humans, it has not yet been demonstrated that the vagus plays a causal role in emotion recognition. To investigate this we employed transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), a novel non-invasive brain stimulation technique that modulates brain activity via bottom-up mechanisms. A sham/placebo-controlled, randomized cross-over within-subjects design was used to infer a causal relation between the stimulated vagus nerve and the related ability to recognize emotions as indexed by the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in 38 healthy young volunteers. Active tVNS, compared to sham stimulation, enhanced emotion recognition for easy items, suggesting that it promoted the ability to decode salient social cues. Our results confirm that the vagus nerve is causally involved in emotion recognition, supporting Darwin's argumentation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

33 CFR 207.10 - Charles River, Mass.; dam of Charles River Basin Commission.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 33 Navigation and Navigable Waters 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Charles River, Mass.; dam of Charles River Basin Commission. 207.10 Section 207.10 Navigation and Navigable Waters CORPS OF ENGINEERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE NAVIGATION REGULATIONS § 207.10 Charles River, Mass.; dam of...

From Darwin to constructivism: the evolution of grounded theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Helen; Griffiths, Debra; McKenna, Lisa

2013-01-01

To explore the evolution of grounded theory and equip the reader with a greater understanding of the diverse conceptual positioning that is evident in the methodology. Grounded theory was developed during the modernist phase of research to develop theories that are derived from data and explain human interaction. Its philosophical foundations derive from symbolic interactionism and were influenced by a range of scholars including Charles Darwin and George Mead. Rather than a rigid set of rules and procedures, grounded theory is a way of conceptualising data. Researchers demonstrate a range of perspectives and there is significant variation in the way the methodology is interpreted and executed. Some grounded theorists continue to align closely with the original post-positivist view, while others take a more constructivist approach. Although the diverse interpretations accommodate flexibility, they may also result in confusion. The grounded theory approach enables researchers to align to their own particular world view and use methods that are flexible and practical. With an appreciation of the diverse philosophical approaches to grounded theory, researchers are enabled to use and appraise the methodology more effectively.

Ethics in actor networks, or: what Latour could learn from Darwin and Dewey.

Science.gov (United States)

Waelbers, Katinka; Dorstewitz, Philipp

2014-03-01

In contemporary Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies, Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT) is often used to study how social change arises from interaction between people and technologies. Though Latour's approach is rich in the sense of enabling scholars to appreciate the complexity of many relevant technological, environmental, and social factors in their studies, the approach is poor from an ethical point of view: the doings of things and people are couched in one and the same behaviorist (third person) vocabulary without giving due recognition to the ethical relevance of human intelligence, sympathy and reflection in making responsible choices. This article argues that two other naturalist projects, the non-teleological virtue ethics of Charles Darwin and the pragmatist instrumentalism of John Dewey can enrich ANT-based STS studies, both, in a descriptive and in a normative sense.

[Simon Morelot (1751-1809). A pharmacist out of the common].

Science.gov (United States)

Flahaut, Jean

2005-01-01

He was born in a family of pharmacists of Beaune. He was a pharmacist in Paris, successively in four different places. He played an important part in the life of the Collège de pharmacie, which became in 1793 the Société libre des Pharmaciens de Paris. In the school of pharmacy, which was conducted by this Society, he had large charges in the administration and the teaching. With these offices, he was obliged to leave his pharmacy and to live in the school, Arbalètre street. In 1803, this school was replaced by a State school, and he was deprived of these functions. He joined in the armies of Napoléon, and successively was: a pharmacist of first class at Brest, a pharmacist in chief during the campaign of Prussia and Poland, and in the end major pharmacist in the army of Spain. He died in Cataluna in 1809, as a result of an "adynamic" fever. He wrote four important books, between 1800 and 1809, dedicated to pharmacy and to natural sciences, which gave a large view of the teaching he had previously made.

The Problem with a Darwinian View of Humanity

Science.gov (United States)

Cunningham, Paul F.

2009-01-01

Comments on the special issue on Charles Darwin and psychology (Dewsbury, February-March 2009), in which the authors present evidence supporting the validity of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and how generations of psychologists have viewed the natural world through its light, taking Darwinian theories for granted as being a literal…

Vy jste Darwin! Yes, I am Darwin. Darwin českýma očima a darwinismus v českých zemích

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hermann, Tomáš

2009-01-01

Roč. 31, č. 2 (2009), s. 36-39 ISSN 0418-5129 R&D Projects: GA AV ČR KJB800630701 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z80630520 Keywords : Darwin´s theory * history of biology * reception of Darwinism Subject RIV: AB - History

Darwin's Perplexing Paradox

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorvaldsen, Steinar; Øhrstrøm, Peter

2013-01-01

from classical natural theology. When Darwin discovered the dynamic process of natural selection, he rejected the old teleological argument as formulated by William Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the beauty and complexity of an intelligently designed universe......, as a whole. He corresponded with Asa Gray on religious themes, particularly touching the problem of pain and intelligent design in nature. The term “intelligent design” was probably introduced by William Whewell. Principally for theological and philosophical reasons, Darwin could only accept the concept...

Darwin’s legacy to rove beetles (Coleoptera, Staphylinidae: A new genus and a new species, including materials collected on the Beagle’s voyage

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stylianos Chatzimanolis

2014-02-01

Full Text Available A species of xanthopygine rove beetles is described and figured here as Darwinilus sedarisi gen. n. and sp. n. The holotype was collected by Charles Darwin in Bahía Blanca, Argentina on the Beagle’s voyage. The contributions of Charles Darwin to rove beetle systematics are summarized briefly.

Random unitary operations and quantum Darwinism

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Balaneskovic, Nenad

2016-01-01

We study the behavior of Quantum Darwinism (Zurek, Nature Physics 5, 181-188 (2009)) within the iterative, random unitary operations qubit-model of pure decoherence (Novotn'y et al, New Jour. Phys. 13, 053052 (2011)). We conclude that Quantum Darwinism, which describes the quantum mechanical evolution of an open system from the point of view of its environment, is not a generic phenomenon, but depends on the specific form of initial states and on the type of system-environment interactions. Furthermore, we show that within the random unitary model the concept of Quantum Darwinism enables one to explicitly construct and specify artificial initial states of environment that allow to store information about an open system of interest and its pointer-basis with maximal efficiency. Furthermore, we investigate the behavior of Quantum Darwinism after introducing dissipation into the iterative random unitary qubit model with pure decoherence in accord with V. Scarani et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 097905 (2002)) and reconstruct the corresponding dissipative attractor space. We conclude that in Zurek's qubit model Quantum Darwinism depends on the order in which pure decoherence and dissipation act upon an initial state of the entire system. We show explicitly that introducing dissipation into the random unitary evolution model in general suppresses Quantum Darwinism (regardless of the order in which decoherence and dissipation are applied) for all positive non-zero values of the dissipation strength parameter, even for those initial state configurations which, in Zurek's qubit model and in the random unitary model with pure decoherence, would lead to Quantum Darwinism. Finally, we discuss what happens with Quantum Darwinism after introducing into the iterative random unitary qubit model with pure decoherence (asymmetric) dissipation and dephasing, again in accord with V. Scarani et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 097905 (2002)), and reconstruct the corresponding

Darwin model in plasma physics revisited

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Xie, Huasheng; Zhu, Jia; Ma, Zhiwei

2014-01-01

Dispersion relations from the Darwin (a.k.a., magnetoinductive or magnetostatic) model are given and compared with those of the full electromagnetic model. Analytical and numerical solutions show that the errors from the Darwin approximation can be large even if phase velocity for a low-frequency wave is close to or larger than the speed of light. Besides missing two wave branches associated mainly with the electron dynamics, the coupling branch of the electrons and ions in the Darwin model is modified to become a new artificial branch that incorrectly represents the coupling dynamics of the electrons and ions. (paper)

Gilson, Darwin, and Intelligent Design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Desmond J. FitzGerald

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The article starts with stating the fact that today there is an increasing recognition of difficulties with Darwinism accompanied by vigorous responses on the part of Darwin’s defenders; among the instances of challenge to the dominant theory, one can find a book of Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again, and those behind the Intelligent Design movement. Inrelating the book of Gilson to the ID proponents, the author concludes that, while in some ways they are on the same side in opposing the anti-creation thrust of Darwinism, Gilson is neutral on the validity or truth of Darwin’s biological hypothesis. Gilson, however, whose book preceded the ID movement by some twenty years, seeks to analyze Darwinism from the perspective of the classical philosophy of nature. He well understands that, according to modern scientific method, final causes are excluded from consideration, but he calls for a biophilosophy which will be open to the reality of human experience as Aristotle was and recognize that teleology is present in nature. According to him, even if teleology seems to be a contestable explanation, chance as understood by Darwinists is the pure absence of explanation.

Darwin's explanation of races by means of sexual selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Millstein, Roberta L

2012-09-01

In Darwin's Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore contend that "Darwin would put his utmost into sexual selection because the subject intrigued him, no doubt, but also for a deeper reason: the theory vindicated his lifelong commitment to human brotherhood" (2009: p. 360). Without questioning Desmond and Moore's evidence, I will raise some puzzles for their view. I will show that attention to the structure of Darwin's arguments in the Descent of Man shows that they are far from straightforward. As Desmond and Moore note, Darwin seems to have intended sexual selection in non-human animals to serve as evidence for sexual selection in humans. However, Darwin's account of sexual selection in humans was different from the canonical cases that Darwin described at great length. If explaining the origin of human races was the main reason for introducing sexual selection, and if sexual selection was a key piece of Darwin's anti-slavery arguments, then it is puzzling why Darwin would have spent so much time discussing cases that did not really support his argument for the origin of human races, and it is also puzzling that his argument for the origin of human races would be so (atypically) poor. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Leonid Arbusow (1882-1951) und die Erforschung des mittelalterlichen Livland] / Dennis Hormuth

Index Scriptorium Estoniae

Hormuth, Dennis, 1979-

2015-01-01

Arvustus: Leonid Arbusow (1882-1951) und die Erforschung des mittelalterlichen Livland / Ilgvars Misāns und Klaus Neitmann (Hg.). Köln [etc.] : Böhlau, 2014. (Quellen und Studien zur baltischen Geschichte ; Bd. 24)

Formalizing Darwinism and inclusive fitness theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Grafen, Alan

2009-11-12

Inclusive fitness maximization is a basic building block for biological contributions to any theory of the evolution of society. There is a view in mathematical population genetics that nothing is caused to be maximized in the process of natural selection, but this is explained as arising from a misunderstanding about the meaning of fitness maximization. Current theoretical work on inclusive fitness is discussed, with emphasis on the author's 'formal Darwinism project'. Generally, favourable conclusions are drawn about the validity of assuming fitness maximization, but the need for continuing work is emphasized, along with the possibility that substantive exceptions may be uncovered. The formal Darwinism project aims more ambitiously to represent in a formal mathematical framework the central point of Darwin's Origin of Species, that the mechanical processes of inheritance and reproduction can give rise to the appearance of design, and it is a fitting ambition in Darwin's bicentenary year to capture his most profound discovery in the lingua franca of science.

Darwin på arabisk

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Riexinger, Martin Thomas

2014-01-01

Det var to revolutionære spor, som i begyndelsen af 1800-talet gødede jorden for introduktionen af Darwins evolutionsteori i Mellemøsten, og muslimer spillede stort set ingen rolle for den udviklingen. Ny bog om islam og evolutionsteorien.......Det var to revolutionære spor, som i begyndelsen af 1800-talet gødede jorden for introduktionen af Darwins evolutionsteori i Mellemøsten, og muslimer spillede stort set ingen rolle for den udviklingen. Ny bog om islam og evolutionsteorien....

13 CFR 120.1882 - What happens if funds to make required loan payments are not generated from the Collateral?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-01-01

... required loan payments are not generated from the Collateral? 120.1882 Section 120.1882 Business Credit and... to make required loan payments are not generated from the Collateral? (a) The SISMBD is responsible... Collateral as set forth in the Loan Agreements, related documents and applicable law. (b) An SISMBD will have...

The ongoing evolution of humanness: perspectives from Darwin to de Chardin

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J. S. Buckeridge

2010-02-01

Full Text Available The nature of humanness is discussed from observations made by Aristotle in 4th-century Greece, through to those of Charles Darwin, Teilhard de Chardin and William Shakespeare. Attempts to define humanness upon a narrow range of criteria, as some have tried, is argued as flawed, for humanness is more elusive than a single or a few demonstrated phenomena. The path that Darwin pursued in determining the place of humans in nature in his book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is assessed from a 19thcentury perspective; the difficulties he faced, both personally and with the broader public, are reviewed and then evaluated in a modern context. Darwin’s thesis adheres to scientific principles, and is debated, defended and later verified on these principles. This is somewhat at variance to the approach adopted by the priest-scientist de Chardin a century later in his major work, The Phenomenon of Man—in which an attempt is made to reconcile a deep Christian faith with science. De Chardin scores well from a theological viewpoint, but fails on scientific grounds as his thesis moves beyond the realms of empiricism into mysticism. Surprisingly, de Chardin’s predicament of a future wherein human evolution enters a new stage of consciousness through the noosphere (an invisible layer of thought encompassing the globe has been partially realised through the worldwide web, although the nature of the web is almost certainly not what de Chardin might have anticipated, or desired. Science too fails to answer all, particularly the nature of God. Darwin considered the Creator in several of his works and does not dismiss the concept of a farseeing deity, although we are left with the notion that he died agnostic. Humanness is derived from an elevated moral code and this is reflected in our arts, particularly literature, wherein we may temporally reflect upon quintessential human traits such as mercy. However, expression of the arts is only

A unified approach to the Darwin approximation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Krause, Todd B.; Apte, A.; Morrison, P. J.

2007-01-01

There are two basic approaches to the Darwin approximation. The first involves solving the Maxwell equations in Coulomb gauge and then approximating the vector potential to remove retardation effects. The second approach approximates the Coulomb gauge equations themselves, then solves these exactly for the vector potential. There is no a priori reason that these should result in the same approximation. Here, the equivalence of these two approaches is investigated and a unified framework is provided in which to view the Darwin approximation. Darwin's original treatment is variational in nature, but subsequent applications of his ideas in the context of Vlasov's theory are not. We present here action principles for the Darwin approximation in the Vlasov context, and this serves as a consistency check on the use of the approximation in this setting

Darwin en Colombia

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto Gómez Gutiérrez

2009-01-01

Full Text Available