The World's Fair

Recently, I read an interesting piece on something known as "Darwin's Delay." Briefly, this is a mystery which queried why it took 20 odd years for Darwin to take his theory of evolution from his own private musings in the late 1830's, to its publication as the Origin of Species in 1859.

Essentially, the buzz right now, is that a Darwin historian, Dr. John van Wyhe out of Cambridge, has been making a case that the reason wasn't due to Darwin fearing reaction to his work, but simply because he was,.. well... kinda busy.

Most historians argue that Darwin kept the theory secret because he was afraid of the reaction it might provoke among his peers and of damaging his reputation. At the time many scientists regarded species as fixed rather than mutable, while theologians were likely to view any theory of evolution as heretical. Psychological analyses have been carried out suggesting Darwin was frightened of ridicule and persecution and it has even been said that a dream he recorded in 1838, in which a person was hanged and came to life, was a Freudian expression of the same fears.

However, Dr van Wyhe's paper, published in the latest edition of the Notes and Records of the Royal Society, suggests that "Darwin's delay" is a myth and that he was simply busy writing more than 10 books, and sporadically hindered by ill health.

Anyway, this does make me feel a lot better about my sporadic posting on this blog, but it's an intriguing read nevertheless. As well, I can't help but think of a few other reason that could have resulted in this long delay:

A nasty case of tennis elbow.

TiVo

You know - had ten children.*

Actually focused on writing the screenplay. Which got shelved, then picked up, shelved again, picked up again, and then (at last check), got shelved again. The film industry is tough.

His computer, like, totally crashed.

* Seriously folks, the birthdates of his ten children pretty much matches perfectly to this 20 year delay. Could the answer just be the simple fact that Darwin was an involved father?