{"id":730,"date":"2017-12-03T14:35:14","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T19:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/?p=730"},"modified":"2017-12-03T14:35:14","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T19:35:14","slug":"darwins-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/2017\/12\/03\/darwins-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwin’s Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

On her second visit to Colby, Professor Janet Browne lectured on her specialization – Charles Darwin.\u00a0 “The origin of the Origin.” Opening her presentation with visuals of Darwin represented in a picture, oil painting and caricature she narrated on how popular Darwin had become.\u00a0Darwin was one of the most famous scientists of his day. His work was regarded as the foundation for the modern world.\u00a0 A man who had a revolution named after him.\u00a0 At the age of 22 while on his voyage of the Beagle his experiences gave him the apparatus to speak about the Origin of Species.\u00a0Darwin\u2019s publication The Origin of Species <\/em>sold out and its arguments spread like forest fire not only in scientific circles but also in public domains. He arguably started the first international scientific debate in history.<\/p>\n

Theology or Science? The church had been a dominant institution in the early 17th century but science overthrew religion. Science through Darwin attempted to explain what people thought was a divine origin. His\u00a0doctrines made people feel uncomfortable. The notion of evolution was new to the Victorian society.\u00a0\u00a0Evolution had been a subject of study for years prior to Darwin\u2019s publication, there were several other evolutionary thinkers and opponents of organic evolution such as Lyell and Louis Agassiz but Darwin’s 1859 publication was the climax and served as a mid-point to the so-called Darwinian revolution.<\/p>\n

The Darwinian revolution is an on-going movement whose origins can be traced to the 18th<\/sup> Century. The impacts of the climax publication live on long after Darwin\u2019s death. The effects of his theories began to be felt while he was yet alive, his concepts are experiencing gradual acceptance as the centuries go by. The 21st<\/sup> Century is currently witnessing the most heated debates of Darwin\u2019s notions. The debates are fueled by the contemporary knowledge of genetics and heredity. Darwin’s concept of natural selection became popular in all kinds of spheres, this concept was in some way used positively but majority of the times it became adopted to push forward narratives of injustice.\u00a0Herbert Spencer\u2019s widely published works were read and embraced by elite in society. Spencer coined the term \u2018survival of the fittest\u2019 in an effort to replace Darwin\u2019s natural selection. This was a vulgarization of the evolution theory that became very popular in the 19th<\/sup> Century. Spencer emphasized that only some would survive the struggle stressing that the lower class were not worthy in society. He flipped Darwin\u2019s findings to justify and promote inequality and injustice.<\/p>\n

Eugenic doctrines were invariably coupled with other ideologies the Darwinian revolution. Initially, Eugenics began as a study to explain the decline of the nation\u2019s biological fitness as evidenced by the British army during warfare. Galton referenced Darwin’s work as he spearheaded the Eugenics movement.\u00a0 He\u00a0saw the need for society to diverge from what was becoming the norm of degeneration. \u2018Keep Britain clean\u2019 and he thought Eugenics would do this. Galton thought society was confining in natural selection and voiced out that they should add artificial selection. He might have wished for the success of natural selection but he certainly felt that things should be added on to make it all work.<\/p>\n

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On her second visit to Colby, Professor Janet Browne lectured on her specialization – Charles Darwin.\u00a0 “The origin of the Origin.” Opening her presentation with visuals of Darwin represented in a picture, oil painting and caricature she narrated on how popular Darwin had become.\u00a0Darwin was one of the most famous scientists of his day. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st132origins\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}