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

Right. I'll start us off.

This bit is pretty bloody good:

'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.'

And, of course, nothing could surpass the final sentence of the book:

'There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved'


Any other offers?

Surely those who praise and those who condemn the man have actually spent some time reading and considering his words.

Not to mention

Nice!

From the introduction:

'Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained--namely, that each species has been independently created--is erroneous. '

May I quote from The Voyage of the Beagle?

"Among those scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: - no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."

I too love the closing line from Origin: it's one of those passages in literature that actually move me considering when it was written and under what circumstances.

I began reading The Descent of Man recently too.

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

Maybe we could base a few hymns on it and sing them at weekly meetings?

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
Evolved from a single-cellular organism through physical laws proven by scientific experiment.

(OK, it needs a bit of work)

Ah a pet bug bear: it irks me now I have started working in schools, that in the morning they are required to sing the Lord God created the mountains/sent the weather/etc, and then in the afternoon I am tasked with trying to explain sedimentary rocks or the water cycle to them.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise
I found dinosaur bones on the beach - please advise!

I like all the 'stuff' at the beginning about pigeons. Read that for five minutes and its sure to send me off to sleep Actually where did my copy of the book go

The final sentence must surely be the most profound and beautiful in the whole of science. Although I'd be happy to be proved wrong..

I don't have a copy but this thread is making me feel like getting one.

'I don't have a copy but this thread is making me feel like getting one.'



I *have* done something good with my life! Go with the feeling, WG!

Check out the link I posted above for the digitised versions if you can't make it to the bookshop.

I'm pleasantly surprised at the reception this thread has been given.

anhaga,

May we branch out a bit and include writings from Darwin's contemporaries? I'm thinking of Humboldt.

Branch out? sure, why not?


Within reason, of course. One wouldn't want this to become the 'what's your favourite passage in world literature' thread.

Just started on 'The Descent of Man' and was struck by this bit of wisdom:

'It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.'

>>>> Within reason, of course. One wouldn't want this to become the 'what's your favourite passage in world literature' thread.


Of course. I was thinking of the great scientist/explorer Alexander von Humboldt, 1769-1859, who wrote "Nature herself is sublimely eloquent. The stars as they sparkle in the firmament fill us with delight and ecstacy, and yet they all move in orbit marked out with mathematical precision."

Among his many accomplishments, Humboldt was the first to study electric eels. "It will perhaps be found that, in most animals, every contraction of the muscular fiber is preceded by a discharge from the nerve into the muscle; and that the mere simple contact of heterogeneous substances is a source of movement and of life in all organized beings."

But my all-time favorite Humboldt quote has to be, "The cocoa bean is a phenomenon, for nowhere else has Nature concentrated such a wealth of valuable nourishment in so small a space."

As you can probably imagine, I am tempted, myself, to start bringing in the Huxley clan, but I will try to restrain myself.

I must remark, however, that Mr. Darwin is, in the world of English Letters, of incomparable eloquence.

Not Darwin, but Professor Sir Fred Hoyle:

"I am haunted by a conviction that the nihilistic philsophy which so-called educated opinion chose to adopt following the publication of The Origin of Species committed mankind to a course of automatic self-destruction. A Doomsday machine ws then set ticking."