Charles Darwin, 1859.
Is there anyone outside of a copper cage who does not know what happened 200 years ago this February 12, 2009? On that day in 1809, in the town of Shrewsbury, seat of the county of Shropshire in central England, the wife of a well-to-do country doctor was delivered of a son, the couple’s fifth child.*
We celebrate that bicentennial this week. On November 24, 2009, we will mark the 150th anniversary of the first date on which one could have purchased the canonical book produced by the man that baby became: The Origin of Species by Mr. Charles Darwin.
Darwin himself is, of course, the central focus of much of the celebrations going on now and for the foreseeable future. (Go here for a good starting place among the many gateways into the festivities).
This project, So Simple A Beginning, is going to take a slightly different tack, focusing on the other milestone in this year of Darwin: We are going to read and invite you to join in our thinking about The Origin, which is of course one of the handful of most important creations our species has ever produced. It has suffered the fate of many such great works in that it is much more referenced (or mis-represented) than read.**
Darwin’s book, 1859.
That fact provides the reason-for-being for this project; it is an effort to come to gain some sense of a book that has throughout its history often disappeared under the weight of competing claims about what it actually says and means.
So, over the next ten months (maybe a little more, if we get really wound up), this site will play host to a range of writers responding section by section to The Origin of Species or to give the book its full title-page mouthful, On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.
So beginning this coming Thursday, come here to read and react to a range of work by our different contributors that bear on the text of the The Origin piece by piece from beginning end. As we settle down to our regular schedule, the minimum guarantee is that at the beginning of each week I’ll post an piece provocations, at least some of the time on whatever point in Darwin’s argument we’ve reached. Midweek, we’ll put up links and connections sometimes very loose ones to the material at hand, and towards the end of the week, another writer will chime in with her or his thoughts. As folks get motivated, more, I’m sure, will show up, especially on the hottest sections. That’s what RSS feeds are for (feed link). You can get more detail on all of us on here, but so far, the group includes Janet Browne, Sean B. Carroll, John Durant, and Carl Zimmer. Alex Wellerstein and Ellen Bales will both be posting and building the tangled bank of web connections in which all our posts will be embedded. A couple more folks are probably going to join in, and some guests are going to drop in for a post or two on particular areas of expertise.
But of course, the making of this project rests with the reader/writers who join us here. Please chime in. Read, react, extend the argument.
Here’s thanks in advance, and looking forward to the ride.
*It’s become a cliché to add that on the same day as the baby to be christened Charles Darwin made his appearance, another birth into much wilder country and poorer circumstances brought the boy to be named Abraham Lincoln into the world. But it’s not soft-minded numerology that juxtaposes Lincoln and Darwin. These two men did come to one common conclusion: that all races shared a common, fully human status. And they did so through at least overlapping lines of reasoning something that is no mere coincidence, as we will surely explore here over the next several months.
**Go here to read John Whitfield’s witty and engaged account of his correcting that gap for himself.
This is a great idea, thanks. Looking forward to reading you all.