It took Darwin about
twenty years to publish the theory that made him feel like he was confessing to a murder (God's perhaps?), but how did he come to articulate the theory in his own mind? His voyage in the HMS Beagle had a lot to do with it, certainly, but it's not all confined to the Galapagos Islands only, nor was it confined to his observations of non-human animals...
Part of it started with his politically and philosophically liberal views concerning the equality of all human beings, and the logical consequences of such equality: if we're all equal, then slavery, and the exploitation of blacks and other foreigners must be wrong.
In the first part of this truly fascinating documentary, Andrew Marr explores the scientific idea of natural selection as formulated by
Darwin, as well as some of the ways in which this description of the living world has taken on a life of its own, with implications that go far beyond the world of science, revolutionizing the way we think about ourselves, challenging the need for a creator, undermining dogma, tradition and authority, and making us question the origin and nature of human morality.
Happy birthday, Chuck!
He's an enthusiastic fellow, isn't he? :)
And yes, I may have failed to mention there would be some remarks about thinkers as wide-ranging as
Marx, Nietzsche, Malthus, J.B.S. Haldane, William Hamilton and
George Price, but now you know :)
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