I cannot resist a combination of Charles Darwin and the OED so, despite the over-Darwinification of this site lately, I have to point you in the direction of a blog post by Ben Zimmer of the Visual Thesaurus, in which he points out that Darwin is the first cited author for 144 different words in that dictionary including (unsurprisingly) natural selection and (more surprisingly) rodeo.
As Zimmer concedes, this number is subject to revision: Darwin didn’t actually coin most of these words, but his is just the first recorded use currently in the dictionary. His status as first cited author for so many words is more of a result of the limited number of publications read for the original OED, rather than any unusual neological ability on his part. Most of these entries could probably easily be antedated with modern databases: for example, it only takes a few seconds on Google Book Search to find an English use of rodeo from 1820, easily beating Darwin’s 1834 quote.
Still, I won’t begrudge the man his 144 words: it is his 200th birthday, after all. Hence, today is either Darwin Day (if you like science) or Academic Freedom Day, (if you like nonsense). Google has decided to commemorate Darwin Day using a special logo:
At least, they have in the UK: the logo in the US is the standard one. Too controversial over there? Update: apparently it is being shown on the US Google as well. Just not for me. How strange.
Finally in Darwin(ish) news, the Open University has a fun but probably entirely inaccurate webapp in which you upload a photo and see how you might look if you devolved to 3.5 million years in the past. Hint: you’d look pretty ugly.
As promotional tactics go, it’s up there with kicking puppies.
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give "credit" to God, Attenborough added: "They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator”.
That’s a nicely disgusting example, possibly even more so than the parasitic wasps that Darwin used in making the same argument:
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.
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This is the cover art for Penguin’s 150th Anniversary Edition of On the Origin of Species, which was painted by Damien Hirst:
The painting sits firmly in the tradition of “still life” and is made up of objects I’ve come to imbue with my own meanings, some of them Darwinian in origin, and that I guess are seen in other areas of my work. The painting has an X-ray-like quality to it, as if it is revealing something about the structure of the objects painted.
I suppose the work, in a modest way, acknowledges Darwin’s analytical mind and his courage to believe in those ideas that questioned the very fabric of existence and belief in his time.
Even so, I think I prefer the Vintage Classics version:
Either way, a book cover is nothing without a bit of Wordart.
Charles Darwin ponders the positives and negatives of getting married:
This is the Question
Marry
Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — —better than a dog anyhow. — Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — Forced to visit & receive relations but terrible loss of time. —
W My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.
Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D.
Not Marry
No children, (no second life), no one to care for one in old age.— What is the use of working ‘in‘ without sympathy from near & dear friends—who are near & dear friends to the old, except relatives
Freedom to go where one liked — choice of Society & little of it. — Conversation of clever men at clubs — Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. — to have the expense & anxiety of children — perhaps quarelling — Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings — fatness & idleness — Anxiety & responsibility — less money for books &c — if many children forced to gain one’s bread. — (But then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)
Perhaps my wife wont like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool —
Following this scientific analysis, he went for marry.
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A quite possibly belated apology from the Church of England to Charles Darwin:
Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends.
No word yet on whether he’s decided to accept it or not.
Still, Ann Widdecombe isn’t happy:
It’s absolutely ludicrous. Why don’t we have the Italians apologising for Pontius Pilate? We’ve already apologised for slavery and for the Crusades. When is it all going to stop? It’s insane and makes the Church of England look ridiculous.
Surprisingly for Anne Widdecombe, she just might have a point.
Whoops: it turns out that, rather than being an official apology of any kind, the words above just form part of a more general essay on Darwin and religion released on the Church of England website. I should have known better than to take the Telegraph at face value.