Thursday, October 19, 2006

Darwin Online

The complete works of Charles Darwin have recently been digitised and made available here, courtesy of the British taxpayers via Cambridge University.

Darwins seminal work not only explains that we are in fact descended from a long chain of ancestors, all of whom reproduced and passed on their characteristics to their offspring before dying. What is particularly impressive about this is that Darwin managed to formulate his theory without knowing Mendel's mechanisms of genetic inheritance.

Daniel Dennett called natural selection "the single best idea anyone has ever had", in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. He's right. It explains why every creature on this planet looks, acts, eats, sleeps, thinks and fucks the way they do.

Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions should read it before uttering another word about evolution.

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