Adam Sedgwick was one of the leading geologists of Darwin's time, and was a friend and former teacher of Darwin. After reading Origin of Species, he wrote a letter to Darwin expressing his disappointment with the book. In his reply, Darwin wrote:
I grieve to have shocked a man whom I sincerely honour. But I do not think you would wish anyone to conceal the results at which he has arrived after he has worked, according to the best ability which may be in him. I do not think my book will be mischievous; for there are so many workers that, if I be wrong I shall soon be annihilated; & surely you will agree that truth can be known only by rising victorious from every attack.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Two hundred years ago today, in the little country town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Charles Robert Darwin was born. No one then could have known that, fifty years and nine months later, Charles would deliver a treatise that would forever change our understanding of our place in nature. That is…
Everyone knows that 1859 was the year in which Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published, but there was a significant event in September of that same year that is often overlooked. It involved the new understanding that humans and extinct mammals (like…
Oh, no. Mooney and Kirshenbaum have written another loopy op-ed. I'm reading it in complete bafflement: what is their argument? What are they trying to do? Because none of it makes sense. It's confusing, right from the beginning, in which they sneer at Richard Dawkins for publishing a new book…
199 years ago today, Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England at the home of his family (known as the Mount). By pure coincidence, Charles would have published one of the most important books ever written 50 years later in 1859, and next year will mark not only the…
Great quote. If only people could remember it. T-shirt?
Truth can be known only by rising victorious from every attack. --Charles Darwin