Re: [asa] Celebrating Darwin's Errors

I like the example Michael Roberts gives, of Darwin and the parallel roads
of Glen Roy. Martin Rudwick wrote a classic article about this, decades
ago, showing how Darwin was (as Michael notes) trying to outdo Lyell's own
very strong commitment to a strict uniformitarianism, which led him
mistakenly to rule out a priori the possibility that the parallel roads had
been formed by glacial activity and not by the slow rising of the land out
of the sea. (If I misremembered the details, I hope Michael will correct
me.) It's a lovely example, similar to the one in which Einstein altered
his own theory of general relativity to preserve a static universe, for a
priori reasons.

I do have to wonder, though, Gregory, why you seem so eager to see us here
"celebrate" Darwin's errors. I'm no more anxious to do that than to
"celebrate" errors by anyone else, and I don't recommend that we turn this
into a litany of negativity, as if there were some perverse pleasure
obtained from it.

Ted

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Received on Tue Nov 18 14:31:00 2008