I really need to pick up another copy...

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Today in 1859 Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published (and immediately sold out). While Darwin published many other books during his life (including the very popular The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms With Observations of Their Habits), On the Origin of Species is by far the most famous and influential, and it is my own shame that my only copy is a small pocket version of it (although I do own 2nd edition copies of The Descent of Man and The Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication [both volumes]). Perhaps the lines have now been so often used that they've nearly become cliche, but I still am enthralled by the closing words of Darwin's great contribution to our understanding of nature;

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having originally been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

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Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into…
The mothership asks If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be? I answer ... "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone…
tags: Sandwalk, Darwin's Down House, nature, photography, London, England, Bromley, England Light Shining into a Tangled Bank. A view through a thicket of trees as seen from the Sandwalk near Darwin's Down House in Bromley, England. Image: GrrlScientist 31 August 2008 [larger view]. The last…
I was going to post the text of a talk ("The Myths of Darwinism") that I gave to the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix in February 2002. But I can't find a scanned copy. I should be able to post it tomorrow, though. So, in place of that, I give you ... "There is grandeur in this view of life,…

Per the photo, Charles seems to have had somewhat H erectus - like brows and sloping forehead, unless the photo was altered a bit.

Remarkable naturalist.