Comments on: Why We Celebrate Darwin

By: The Party’s Over | America Watches Obama

The Party’s Over | America Watches Obama — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:02:28 +0000

[...] Darwin’s glaring scientific failures, journalist Chris Mooney calls The Origin of Species “one of the most brilliant books ever written.” Concerning the [...]

By: gillt

gillt — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:55:45 +0000

Erassmussimo: “Darwin didn’t need to write an “Evolution for Dummies” book.”

Does it really make any sense saying biology from the late 1800s is easier to understand than 20th century physics?

Of course the field has advanced since then. It’s one thing to read “On the Origin of Speices” and another to read a year old Science review paper on heteropatry.

By: Sven DiMilo

Sven DiMilo — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:57:47 +0000

“Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life, as one can in any likelihood pursue.”
-C. Darwin

By: John Kwok

John Kwok — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:51:51 +0000

@ Jon -

Economics has been the source of ample inspiration for research in evolutionary biology, of which the most notable may be in community ecology, in which economic theory has been applied toward understanding interspecific interactions within ecological communities.

As for your assessment of Darwin and Newton, I would concur, but especially in Darwin’s case, since he fundamentally altered mankind’s conception of its place within nature with the publication of “On the Origin of Species”.

@ Chris -

Hope you have a chance to stop by Harvard University and chat with historian of science Janet Browne, especially when her two volume biography of Darwin is regarded by many as the best, quite possibly, definitive, account.

By: toasterhead

toasterhead — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:08:35 +0000

9. Vindrisi Says:
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:29 pm

Interestingly, Darwin appears to have had low self-esteem, and made a number of self-deprecating assessments of his abilities in his autobiography. It says something nice about the man that he was humble to a fault.
___________

I also see a bit of humility in the fact that he waited two decades to publish one of the most important books of all time.

By: Erasmussimo

Erasmussimo — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:56:03 +0000

Yes, I’ve read several of Einstein’s attempts at explaining his work, and neither of them was very good. Moreover, he scaled down the subtlety of this work to make it accessible. Darwin didn’t need to write an “Evolution for Dummies” book.

By: Vindrisi

Vindrisi — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:29:04 +0000

I don’t recall who said it, but I recall one physicist who read Einstein’s popular book on relativity being quoted as saying something along the lines of “Einstein seems to think that that adding “dear reader” here and there in his technical writing makes his ideas comprehensible to lay readers” in reaction to it. I’ve started and stopped reading that book five or six times, and I am now fairly sure I agree with that assessment.

By: Sorbet

Sorbet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:09:29 +0000

-“I’m no Darwin, but I’m smart enough to see what you’re up to.”?

Erasmussimo, some people say that about Feynman though. Apart from Einstein, Feynman is probably the only other twentieth century scientist who was so popular in the public imagination.

By: Sorbet

Sorbet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:07:51 +0000

I would say that if one needed to make a choice, Darwin and Newton were probably the two most important scientists who ever lived. Writing in 2000, The Economist stated that the impact of Newton’s work has probably been greater on civilization than the rise and fall of nations. If you think about it, Newtonian mechanics is still perfectly adequate for most daily things, and the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it.

Chris, I would say that Einstein’s book about relativity is not very clear. Einstein was emphatically not a very good teacher. For special relativity (which needs not more than high school algebra) I would refer to Taylor and Wheeler’s book. Apart from that, for a popular treatment of general and special relativity, I think Kip Thorne’s book is hard to beat.

By: Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:32:13 +0000

# 3 Erasmussimo,
Indeed, but I’ve heard that this popular Einstein work is readable…though I’ve never read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Special-General-Albert-Einstein/dp/0517884410