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April 18, 2008
Darwin, back againBoardBuzz is a fan of Charles Darwin—enough to lament having missed Darwin Day back in February. And now we bring you some exciting Darwin news.
The complete works of Charles Darwin are finally available to anyone, anywhere to read, i.e., they've made their way onto the internet. And it only took 126 years for that to evolve (groan)! This vast collection includes his notes from the five-year voyage of the HMS Beagle, where he collected fossil and specimen samples and first began to formulate his theory of evolution, the first draft of his Origin of Species from the 1840s, and even his wife Emma's recipe book.
Wired Science reports:
Cambridge University, where Darwin studied theology, has digitized and published on the internet its collection of some 30,000 items and 90,000 images by the man who changed the course of science by writing the evolutionary primer, The Origin of Species, in 1859.
The original draft of that seminal work, until now available only to scholars at the Cambridge University Library, is among those now online. There are even some audio samples, like the spoken-word version of the last sentence of Origin of the Species -- alas not in the voice of Darwin himself, who died in 1882.
"This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free," John van Wyhe, director of the project, said. "His publications have always been available in the public sphere -- but these papers have until now only been accessible to scholars."
BoardBuzz loves seeing history preserved for the ages. There is now plenty of "new" information for students and teachers to explore, but perhaps his original works will spark new debate over the theory of evolution. As Wired Science points out:
From the Scopes trial of 1925, to the 1987 Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard against teaching creationism in public schools, to the 2005 ouster of the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board which had sanctioned the teaching of “intelligent design,” to the “Teach the Controversy” mantra of creationists in intelligent-design clothing to the embrace by President Bush of i.d. education -- the conversation started by Darwin has shown no real sign of abating.
In January, Legal Clips reported that Florida was debating the place of evolution in science standards. Current Florida standards, approved in 1996, refer to "biological change over time," and contain a description of evolution, but no mention of the word itself. Debate in Florida echoes that in Texas, which is preparing a similar revision of its science-education standards.
BoardBuzz is happy to report that Florida's State Board of Education voted in February to use the term "scientific theory of evolution" in its new science standards, the first time the word "evolution" has been included. Yet anti-evolution sentiments do exist and have been addressed in reports such as "Science, Evolution, and Creationism," from the National Academy of Sciences, that argues that creationism does not belong in science class.
Posted April 18, 2008 1:45 PM | Curriculum | Religion
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