Re: [asa] Celebrating Darwin's Errors

It all depends how it is done. I am afraid my best friend Gregory is doing
it to knock Darwin and as you say that is nasty and rude.

However it is instructive to see what mistakes a great scientist made and
Darwin was truly a great scientist - along with many others.

His contributions to geology and biology were immense and he was one of the
first to use chemistry in biological experiments - on insectivorous plants.

For years I have been slowly collecting Darwin's errors, especially in his
geology and from his Autobiography. Last night instead of counting sheep
before going to sleep I counted Darwin's mistakes. I topped a good 20 and
thought of more today. I was trying to decide whether not pursuing his first
love Fanny Mostyn Owen was a mistake. But then something might have gone
wrong when they were caught lying in the strawberry beds at her house -
Woodhouse

Many are amusing as I point out in my travels in Wales, but some are
significant as when he out-lyelled Lyell in Glen Roy over the Parallel
Roads.

However there are some who don't want to allow their hero to make any
mistakes but their are also some who just get silly in trying to find errors
in Darwin's writings so that they can be what they style incorrectly an
iconoclast.

On of the joys of doing the history of science ( hardly a case of real
natural science but more a humanity:))is to find the little details and
quirks of any character you study. You often feel that you know them as a
human being rather than a machine churning out scientific facts (source
unacknowledged). Further you cannot do any proper history of science unless
you get inside what the scientists was doing and ask awkward questions about
their work and probably find out some of their mistakes.

Finally whatever else Darwin was a lovely man, full of consideration and
compassion. That cannot always be said of Christians

Michael

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 6:18 PM
Subject: RE: [asa] Celebrating Darwin's Errors

Celebrating the errors of a historical person seems like a downright rude
and nasty exercise. Imagine the tables were turned and people wanted to
celebrate the errors of Calvin, Luther, or any saint you can mention.

...Bernie

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Tue Nov 18 14:14:01 2008