“The man who killed God” - various
Wrote On the Origin of Species finally giving mankind insight on how all manner of plants and animals came into existence via mutation, genetic diversity and natural selection. The end of the book waxes poetic and I find to be one of the most beautiful and influential texts ever written. This is sometimes referred to as the tangled bank passage. I love the phrases “Thus, from the war of nature”
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. 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 by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling 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.
Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species - Ending
The book is written about discoveries he made while voyaging on the HMS Beagle.
The finches of the Galapagos island are one of the more famous animals referenced in Darwin’s work and have been affectionately called Darwin’s Finches. Darwin noted the finches of each island had slightly different beaks that were more suited towards the wildlife of each island.
Darwin was pressured by religious zealots of his age much like Galileo Galilei was. Sadly later publications of the origin of species have text changes to appease these masses.
Darwin effectively created a rationale of scientific Naturalism and Atheism.