Today is the 150th Anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.  This is almost certainly the most important book ever written, and Charles Darwin’s idea has been aptly described as “The Best Idea Anyone Ever Had.”

Darwin waited nearly 20 years to publish his book.  The prominent theory on why he waited is summed as this: he was afraid of the negative backlash.  Darwin knew how deep his idea would cut across old mysticism, and also knew that it would not just be a flesh wound.  The idea of evolution wasn’t a flimsy knife, it was a mighty sword.  I believe Darwin understood that the very fact that the theory was so strong would be the thing that would make it so dangerous (perhaps for him).

During the time leading up to the writing of the book Darwin had researched the subject in great depth, and from then to the time of publishing had collected an even larger body of evidence.  When he did publish he did so with a well thought out theory that seemed to answer all the arguments against it.  He published a wealth (literally, for mankind) of knowledge that he had ingeniously analyzed and scrutinized.

How prescient this man was about its theory, and its reception!  Today, 150 years later, evolution is considered a scientific fact, so strong is the evidence in the view of the experts.  Predictions laid down based on evolution via natural selection have come true over and over.  We find new fossils yearly, right where they should be in the strata, right where they should be evolutionarily between already-known species.  We have found the “missing links” between the lower primates and man.  We now have molecular and DNA evidence supporting evolution.  In fact, there isn’t a single scientific fact known to modern biologists that disagrees with evolution.  Yet the old mysticism clings to bronze-age creation myths instead of recognizing the most well proven scientific theory ever.  Darwin was right about the science, but he was also right about his theory’s social implications, and that some would reject his theory without ever giving it a chance.

As a free thinking human I think this day should be celebrated as a high holiday.  Darwin’s achievement surely ranks with the discover of fire, the first written word, and Newton’s, Einstein’s and Heisenberg’s respective works in physics.  Sitting on top of the theory of evolution is all of modern biology.  Countless lives have been saved because of scientists developing medicine based on this knowledge.  It is a triumph of the human intelligence, one note in a song that tells us that we can shape our species’s destiny with critical thinking and scientific reasoning.

I just stumbled across these awesome lectures by Richard Dawkins. They were done in 1991 as part of the Royal Institute series of Christmas Lectures.

I saw this today. Its a series of pics of Earth from 1023 meters (10 million light years) to 1016 meters (100 attometers). Pretty cool.

Here is a facinating story about the use of embryonic stem cells to cure blindness on the MIT Technology Review site.  It looks like it is going to actually happen. How cool is that?

I guess the douche bags that think the earth is 6000 years old and that a clump of 50 – 150 cells is a human being will be pissed.  The rest of us are incredibly happy to see such progress being made in a promising field of scientific research.

I love science.  I wish I had had this passion for science when I was 18.  Back then I liked science and technology, but definitely didn’t have the drive for knowledge I do now.  I seemed to be naive, and I seemed to have a desire for beer and lots of it.

Fast forward a number of years, to about 2004.  I started to really get hankering, as the old cartoon says, for some science.  I don’t really know what sparked it in me again.  Perhaps it was the fact that I was working at a company that offered decent pay post dot-com, but was basically devoid of real computer engineering challenges.  Perhaps my mind needed more than what I was getting at work.

I started reading a lot of science non-fiction.  One of the first books I picked up in my newly discovered hunger was Hitler’s Scientists.  I had just finished reading Hitler’s Pope, and was also interested in more information about that interesting era.  Hitler’s Pope had been an great political/religious book.  On the other hand, Hitler’s Scientists was an excellent scientific book.  The name can fool you for the latter book.  While the book did involve several of the scientists that served Germany during WWII, it really covered scientific achievement from the entire era.  More in the next paragraph.

I cannot imagine being given a better education on the history of science from 1850 – 1950 than that offered in Hitler’s Scientists.  This was an incredible period for science.  The names that pop up from that time period are legends in human history, not just science.  Hitler’s Scientists covers the major achievements and the environments that surrounded all of the major discoveries of that age, especially in physics. Einstein! Heisenberg! von Braun!

As one would expect, coverage of science focuses on events leading up to, and including, Hitler’s rise to power and eventual fall.  The book continues on with chapters on the atomic bombings of Japan, and the US nuclear program post-war.

I cannot recommend this book enough.  It is one of my favorites books, and I have consulted it on more than one occasion after lively conversations involving subjects from the book.  If you are interested in WWII or in science, you will find this book more than fascinating.  Give it a try!

I just finished a fantastic book aptly titled Why Evolution Is True by biologist Jerry Coyne.  Coyne is not only a biology professor at the University of Chicago, but a talented science writer.  Science writers have a tough job. They need to convey scientific information in a way that non-scientists can understand, while staying true to the underlying science and not presenting a bias.  Coyne presents a mountain of scientific information in a fashion that conveys that you are looking at a mountain, but not climbing it.  And there is a mountain of evidence supporting evolution through natural selection presented in the book.

Coyne doesn’t take very long to get down to the business of presenting the scientific fact of evolution through natural selection.  The fact?  Yup.  Coyne drives home the point that evolution is not “just a theory” in the world of science.  Amongst paleontologist, geneticists, biologists and other scientists, evolution is considered a fact.  There is no debate.  Coyne doesn’t spend a lot of time talking politics, but he does spend some time putting the idea that their is any debate to bed.  Evolution is a fact, and this book takes a nice cross-sampling of hard-data from a number of scientific fields to present why scientists have come to this conclusion.

Along the way Coyne basically destroy so called “intelligent design”.  Coyne doesn’t do so with venom or malice, but I would imagine it would be fairly embarrassing to the ID crowd, if they took the time to read his book.  Coyne doesn’t really have to go out of his way to do this.  The arguments of ID seem shallow and poorly thought through when compared to the work done by scientists of the last 150 years.

The book is also littered with numerous scientific trivia.  I particularly enjoyed learning the fact that all humans actually grow fur in the womb, and shed it before they are born.  This is just one of many evolutionary artifacts that Coyne highlights in the book.  The illustrations are also fantastic.  There are a number of hand-drawn illustrations throughout the book that helped to highlight various scientific .

If you are into science at all, or are looking for an interesting read on how we came to be, I would highly recommend you read Why Evolution Is True.