Darwin Day

Or rather, the first Darwin Day of the year; we get another D-Day on Nov. 24, commemorating the publication of easily the greatest scientific work in the world, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. On a related note, everybody should start planning enormous celebrations for NEXT year’s Darwin Year, when it’ll be his 200th Birthday, the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin, AND the International Year of the Earth.

Aside from the obvious implications of Darwin’s work for biology and ecology, I think it’s important to keep in mind Darwin’s influence on the creation of coherent methodologies for historical sciences. By this, I mean the ability for people to recognize that the objects and phenomena we experience and observe in the study of nature have a history, and fit into the larger narrative of natural processes. It is this theoretical framework that makes the natural sciences work, distinguishes them from the physical sciences, and gave us such wonders as biology, ecology, and GEOLOGY!

So, Happy Darwin Day, folks! Punch a creationist in celebration!