Progressive Democrat Issue 64: THOUGHTS

This week even more than usual has been going on. The Danish cartoons, the death of Coretta Scott King, and scandals, scandals, scandals in the Republican party. As usual, I can't keep up with it.

First off, I want to mention that Feburary 12th is Darwin Day, a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday and of his great theory of evolution. . Darwin was one of the biggest contributors to modern science, developing an understanding of how life develops and changes within an environmental context that was just as groundbreaking as Newtonian physics or Einsteinian physics. His contributions to human understanding can be summarized by quoting Richard Dawkins from his introduction to the 2003 Everyman's Library edition of Darwin's Origin of Species and Voyage of the Beagle:

"Consider where we would be without Darwin's idea. We'd presumably have some sort of science of biology...We would know that the a human body is a teeming army of cells, a thousand times more numerous than the people in the world; we'd know that every one of these cells is a mass-production molecule-factory packed with the membranous equivalent of miles of sophisticated conveyor belt. We'd know a great deal about how our bodies work, and how the bodies of shrimps, elephants and redwood tress work. We'd be compelled to recognize how complicatedly organisms are fitted to survive in their particular worlds. But we wouldn't have the foggiest idea why. We'd read volumes about living things but wouldn't have a clue about where they came from originally or why they work so efficiently and purposefully. It would undoubtedly be the most baffling problem in biology--probably in the whole of science and philosophy. This was the problem that Darwin decisively solved. We are now as certain as one can ever be in science that a version of Darwin's solution is the correct one.

"The Darwinian solution to the riddle of existence is so powerfully simple, so felicitous to the modern mind, that it is hard for us to understand why it had to wait until the mid-nineteenth century before anyone thought of it...Darwin and Wallace. They alone thought of it."

For those who are interested, I have put together a series of essays in celebration of Darwin Day. Together, they are too long for this newsletter, so I will merely link to them.

Darwin Day Essay I: Evolution Explained

Darwin Day Essay II: Evolution Defended

Darwin Day Essay III: Happy Birthday Charles

Now, on to this week’s politics.