THE OVERVIEW FOR SPRING 2000
CONSIDER, IF YOU WILL
PLEASE CONSULT THE WEB PAGES LISTED BELOW
THE IDEAS OF CHARLES R. DARWIN
THE CONCEPT OF CHANGE
TO SUMMARIZE
SELECTED URBANOWICZ WWW REFERENCES ONLY

THE OVERVIEW FOR SPRING 2000 emphasizes that for every presentation dealing with Darwin I attempt to incorporate as much "new" information as possible, bringing Darwin up-to-date (and, what is much more important, "ideas" concerning Darwin up-to-date) for contemporary individuals. On January 31, 2000, for example, one sees The Wall Street Journal writing about "evolving ecosystems" (page 1) and the need for what I see is an understanding of Darwin's ideas (Bernard Wysocki Jr., 2000, More Companies Cut Risks By Collaborating With Their 'Enemies.' The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2000, page 1 and page 10, page 1.)

CONSIDER, IF YOU WILL, recent words from the most reputable Business Week magazine of April 10, 2000:

"This summer, researchers will complete one of the greatest biological endeavours since Charles Darwin made his voyage of discovery on the HMS Beagle. Scientists will announce the completion of a rough draft of the human genome--a first attempt at decoding the entire set of about 100,000 human genes. Champagne corks will pop, backs will be slapped, and biologists will mark the start of a revolutionary era in biology." Ellen Licking, John Carey, and Amy Barrett, 2000, Biotech's Next Holy Grail. Business Week, April 10, 200, pages 136-142, page 136.

I believe these are powerful words dealing with an individual who was born in 1809 (who didn't know what he wanted to do after he graduated from university), went around the world in HMS Beagle over the years 1831-1835 (and saw things that others had seen but had thought things that none-others-had thought), and eventually published a book in 1859 (abbreviated as Origin), and was honored by British society (by being interred in Westminster Abbey after his death): this is an extremely powerful comparison point for the beginning of the "revolutionary" (or should that be "evolutionary"?) era in biology" in the year 2000. Wow!

On 18 April 2000, the "Darwin Centre" opened in London (Natural History Museum) and information about that event may be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_717000/717674.stm as well as a video (with Sarah Darwin, Charles Darwin's Great-Great Grandaughter) at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/715000/video/_717674_christine_mcgourty0700_vi.ram. Ideas of Charles R. Darwin are as current as today; indeed, I have interests in "gaming" and in a recent issue of a "gaming" publication one reads the following: "All poker is a form of social Darwinism: the fit survive, the weak go broke [stress added]." (Al Alvarez, 2000, The World Series of Poker. Poker Digest, Vol. 3, No. 9, April 21-May 4, 2000, pages 34-37, page 37). Darwin is today, and yet, as The New Scientist pointed out in the recent issue of 20 April 2000, "...47 per cent of Americans--and a quarter of college graduates--believe humans did not evolve, but were created by God a few thousand years ago. Nearly a third believe creationism should be taught in science lessons..." [see http://www.newscientist.co.uk/features/features_22352.html] and this is why I do what I do concerning Darwin!

PLEASE CONSULT THE WEB PAGES LISTED BELOW if you wish to get a full feeling of my ideas concerning Darwin; perhaps another most important recent statement concerning Darwin is as follows:

"Whatever the controversies that surround him, Charles Darwin was certainly the most important natural scientist of the past century; he may become the most important social scientist of the next. His great insight--that humans are animals and that their behavior, like that of all animals, is shaped by evolution--is now making its way into social theory. In economics, linguistics, anthropology and psychology, scholars are attempting to see how our evolved nature, interacting with particular environments, generates the ways we trade and speak, live with others and with ourselves [stress added]." (The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1999, page A24)

THE IDEAS OF CHARLES R. DARWIN should be interpreted in the context of his time, most certainly in the context of the year 2000, and, in the context of the times of every-single-individual who has ever written about him! Every individual should be understood (or at least interpreted) in the "context" of their times; consider, if you will, Thomas Henry Huxley (born on 4 May 1825 and died on 29 June 1895), whom Adrian Desmond encapsulated in his 1997 book as follows: Huxley: From Devil's Disciple To Evolution's High Priest. More recently, Sherrie Lyons has written about Huxley as follows:

"The production of scientific knowledge does not occur in a vaccum, and certainly to understand Huxley's ideas they must be situated within the larger framework of Victorian society." Sherrie L. Lyons, 1999,Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of A Scientist (NY: Prometheus Books), pages 11-12.

While Charles Darwin was a gifted, important, prolific, and talented individual (he published more than two dozen books in his lifetime, including Origin, the first edition of which appeared in 1859 and Descent of Man, which was published in 1871), Huxley (described as "Darwin's Bulldog"), was clearly a major scientist in his own right and as Lyons points out:

"Probably the most famous of Huxley's work is Man's Place in Nature. Published in 1863, eight years befor Darwin published Descent of Man, Man's Place in nature provided powerful evidence that humans were no exception to Darwin's theory." Sherrie L. Lyons, 1999,Thomas Henry Huxley: The Evolution of A Scientist (NY: Prometheus Books), page 31.

Charles Darwin lived, thought, published, and worked in an enriched environment (including his own parents, sisters, wife and children) and he was a meticulous and thoughtful individal. As James Gleick wrote in 1999:

"One could make an all-star list of slow but effective thinkers. Charles Darwin considered himself too slow-witted to engage in argument. 'I suppose I am a very slow thinker,' he said the year he published The Origin of Species" (James Gleick, 1999, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, page 109).

Individuals observe, think, and eventually publish at their own speed and as Livingston and Sinclair wrote in 1967:

"Darwin taught us all to see more clearly what everyone had seen, and Darwin also taught us to think, along with him, what no one else had thought. No branch of science is more dominated by a single theory, by a single great idea, than is the whole of biology by the idea of evolution by Natural Selection" (J. Livingston and L. Sinclair, 1967, Darwin And The Galapagos, n.p.). 

THE CONCEPT OF CHANGE is definitely vital for an understanding of Darwin and in almost every item I place on the WWW concerning Darwin, I attempt to include the following table (based on Morse Peckham, Editor, 1959, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text , Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press); Origin went through six editions in Darwin's lifetime (in addition to his numerous other publications), and please think about the work that went into the folowing six editions of Origin from 1859-1872:

In the 5th edition of 1869, Darwin used (for the first time) the famous phrase (borrowed from Herbert Spencer [1820-1903]): "Survival of the Fittest." In the 6th edition of 1872, "On" was dropped from the title. In the 1st edition of 1859, Darwin only had the following phrase about human beings: "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." In the 2nd edition of 1860 Darwin also added in reference to "the Creator" and wrote the following:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator [STRESS added] 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."

Incidentally, in his 1839 publication entitled The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote the following:

"Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in subliminity 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 [STRESS added]." 1839, page 436.

What "Darwin" do you know and cite? Even the recent (and otherwise excellent) 1999 Lucy's Legacy: Sex And Intelligence in Human Evolution (Harvard University Press), by Alison Jolly (Princeton University) has the erroneous statement that Darwin "kept the last paragraph of his masterpiece unchanged through all successive editions of the Origin" (page 15). What previous "beliefs" do you bring to a reading of Darwin (or anything?).

TO SUMMARIZE I would like to point out that thinking and writing about "Darwin" is as current as today, as reading and thinking about various publications indicates (and merely paying attention to the world about us). I believe in what I do (in teaching and utilizing Darwin in my teaching) and hope to share my Darwin interests in a conference on this campus in September 2000 and at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association in November 2000. As I wrote several years ago (at http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin/DarwinSem-S95.html), I still believe in the following:

"The paper deals with some of the scientific research of Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), specifically his monumental 1859 publication entitled On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This paper also points out the "human" side of this most noted of human beings and Darwin's ideas are presented in the context of his times. Today, Darwin's theory of "natural selection" is hopefully well known but how did the culture of his times influence his ideas and the development and acceptance of his theory? What happened before Darwin published Origin and what came after his numerous other publications? Charles Darwin was an extremely important individual for a variety of reasons: the data he collected, the experiments he conducted, and the theories he proposed influenced a variety of disciplines, from anthropology to zoology as well as ecology, geology, and the general social sciences. His influence continues to be condemned, supported, and debated after almost 150 years [stress added]."

#1. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/CELTFall2000ConfSubm.html [Fall 2000 submission for presentation at California State University, Chico]
#2. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin2000.html [Teaching as Theatre: Some Classroom Ideas, Specifically Those Concerning Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882)]. This is an invited paper for a session in November 2000 at the national meetings of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA; please see:
#3. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/SelfTesting/DarwinTestOne.htm [January 2000 Darwin Self-Test #1]. This self-test, and obviously new ones, can be incorporated into the Darwin CD-ROM/Darwin DVD.
#4. http://mole.csuchico.edu:8080/ramgen/archive/darwinvoyage.rm [1999, 22 minute video available on your desktop with REALPLAYER; this is tape #2 of the proposed four-part series: it takes "Darwin" from England to South America.].
#5. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinMiscSep99.html [1999 Darwin Misc September]} "Generic" Darwin handout for a variety of Fall 1999 classroom presentations, including Anthropology and Philosophy; previous guest lectures on Darwin have also been given for Art and Mathematics.].
#6. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinSp99Presentations.html [1999 Spring Handout for ART 197 and PHIL 108 presentations.].
#7. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinPhil108.htm [1998 Fall Handout for PHIL 108 Presentation].
#8. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/F98Homecoming.html [1998 Fall Handout for Homecoming Presentation].
#9. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/ANTH300.html [1998 Fall ANTH 300 presentation].
#10. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinArt197.html [1998 September presentation for ART 197].
#11. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/PowerPoint/DarwinModernismSep98/ [1998 September PowerPoint Presentation for Art 197].
#12. http://rce.csuchico.edu/rv/Darwin.html [1998 May: 15 Minute Videotape Report for the Office of the Provost} prepared as part of my "Master Teacher" Report.].
#13. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin_Folklore.html [1998: Folklore Concerning Charles R. Darwin. For the Southwestern Anthropological Society Meetings] also please see:
#14. http://orion.csuchico.edu/Pages/vol40issue2/n.darwin.html [1998: Chantal Lamers, Darwin's Insight Evolves To CD-ROM. The Orion, Vol. 40, Issue 2, February 4, page 1 and page 8.].
#15.http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Jan'98_Millennium_Paper.html [1998 January Presentation dealing with Technology and the Future].
#16. http://mole.csuchico.edu:8080/ramgen/archive/darwinreflections.rm [1997, 18 minute video available on your desktop with REALPLAYER; this is tape #1 of the proposed four-part series: it "sets the setting" of Darwin in England].
#17. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Forum/Darwin_Sep'97.html [1997 Fall Anthropology Forum Presentation].
#18. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Forum/darwin.mov [1996 Fourteen Second Darwin "Quick Time" Movie].
#19. http://www.csuchico.edu/anth/CASP/1996.html [1996 publication, including chapter on Darwin by the Chico Anthropological Society].
#20. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Forum/Nov7-96.html [with Donna Crowe & Kathy Fernandes} 1996 Fall Anthropology Forum presentation].
#21. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin/DarwinSem-S95.html [1995 January ANTH Seminar paper].
#22. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Darwin116.html [1993 November Darwin presentation at the American Anthropological Association Meetings].
#23. http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Forum/Feb11-93.html [1993 Fall Anthropology Forum Presentation].

NOTE: A search on 17 September 1999 with the "search engine" Northern Lights [http://www.northernlight.com/], using "Charles Darwin," resulted in 54,903 "hits" on the World Wide Web; a search on Northern Lights on 18 April 2000 provided 64,880 hits. Using "Google" [http://www.google.com/] on 18 April 2000 provided 58,599 hits. Also, web page #5 above provides links to other Darwin-related sites, including Huxley, Wallace, and others.