brainrow

Today is also the 198th birthday of Charles Darwin. (Links to many Darwin Day posts here.)

From ScienceBlogs:

For scientists, the human fascination of Darwin’s life is only part of the picture. He is also admired because he was a scientist’s scientist — a role model for the ages. He had a keen insight into the way that nature worked, and he was able to use his observations to formulate hypotheses. He was also a very careful and methodical scientist. In the years between when he first formulated his evolutionary hypothesis and when he (reluctantly) published it, he conducted experiment after experiment, looking at different aspects of life. He bred pigeons to study how selection could result in changes in offspring. He spent years dissecting barnacles and observing the similarities and differences within and among species. He (with some help from his son and butler) soaked seeds in a tub of saltwater for months at a time to study dispersal. He gathered information from a web of collaborators that spanned the world, on a range of topics that covered a great deal of the science of biology. Darwin’s combination of insight and patience is what makes him a role model for scientists, and it’s one of the reasons that most of us have such great respect for him.

Darwin’s importance is only growing:

In his own way, Darwin emancipated the sciences. By producing a coherent theory that unified biology, he established biology as a theoretically sound and intellectually exciting science. Lawrence Summers … is right to say that “If the 20th century was defined by developments in the physical sciences, the 21st century will be defined by developments in the life sciences.” It will be Darwin’s century, a century in which his ideas will be the strong bedrock on which great inventions are built.

The Creator sure was busy 198 years ago today, and He did some of His best work then, too.

Part of the legend of King Arthur says that Arthur is not dead, but only sleeping under a hill in Avalon, waiting to return in England’s hour of greatest need. It’s a myth, of course. Arthur himself is at least half myth.

Today is the 198th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, and I can’t help thinking that this country sure could use him now.

Of course, Lincoln can’t return to save us from our current troubles, any more than Washington or Jefferson could solve the troubles of Lincoln’s own day. “It is for us, the living,” and it always has been.

We will not be saved unless we save ourselves.

On the PBS NewsHour tonight, essayist Julia Keller said of this portrait, “It is less of a face, maybe, than a soul, worn inside out.”

Lincoln is a source of comfort and encouragement in our hour of need. He was a mortal, fallible human being, like ourselves. He showed us just what a mortal, fallible human being can do. His life challenges every one of us to do better.