h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a bit of an embarrassment to admit this, but I'm just finishing up Darwin's Origin of Species for the first time.


What brilliance!

All biology programmes absolutely must begin with this work! All works published in the field since 1859 strikes me as either minor footnotes on or various degrees of misunderstanding of Darwin's original inconceivably clear and irrefutable insight!

I don't understand how anyone, upon honestly perusing Darwin's wonderful work could come away with anything but a full acceptance of the origin of species through the effects of natural selection. In short, Darwin's 'Origin' is truly what Dennett described Darwin's theory to be: a universal acid, an acid which will, if approached with honesty, dissolve away the scales of preconception and superstition, leaving the magnificent beauty of the natural world to shine joyfully through.

I was particularly struck by this passage (among countless others):

'Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the larvae of ichneumonidae feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars, not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.' [to my mind it is, of course, a logical deduction.]

>..I don't understand how anyone, upon honestly perusing Darwin's wonderful work could come away with anything but a full acceptance of the origin of species through the effects of natural selection...<

Of course, the operative word is, 'honestly'

Unfortunately, many are dishonest, even with themselves..