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He invented evolution, didn’t he, Charles Darwin? Al Murray: The Pub Landlord: My Gaff, My Rules, London’s Playhouse Theatre
Darwin was born the son of a doctor. But using his own theories, evolved into a scientist. He was faskinated [sic] by nature, and decided to find out more about it by going to sea on a beagle. Cunk on Britain s1e3, BBC 2018
All the professors in all the religious colleges in this country rolled into one would not equal Charles Darwin. Robert G Ingersoll
This century will be called Darwin’s century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance – at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. Robert Ingersoll
The wildlife of the Galapagos inspired Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Horizon: Wings of Angels, BBC 1999
In 1947 David Lack was confirmed into the Church of England. He became a leading force in the re-emergence of Darwinism, which followed the Second World War. ibid.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was built on the work of naturalists who were discovering thousands of new species across the world. Brian Cox, Wonders of Life III: Endless Forms Most Beautiful, BBC 2013
Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory – natural selection – to explain the mechanism of evolution. Stephen J Gould, Evolution as Fact and Theory, 1981
It was Darwin’s chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence, rather than their occurrence, which becomes highly probable. R A Fisher 1890-1962
Darwinian man though well behaved, is really but a monkey shaved! Gilbert & Sullivan, Princess Ida
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. John Maynard Smith, The Theory of Evolution 1958 p15
Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of ‘design’ that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study. ibid. p16
The theory of evolution by natural selection was put forward in the 1850s independently by two men: one was Charles Darwin who lived in this house in the village of Down in Kent, the other was Alfred Russel Wallace. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 9/13: Evolution: The Ladder of Creation, BBC 1973
There are two traditions of explanation that march side by side in the Ascent of Man: one is the analysis of the physical structure of the world, the other is the study of the processes of life. ibid.
The manifestations of life, its expressions, its forms, are so diverse that they must contain a large element of the accidental. And yet the nature of life is so uniform that it must be constrained by many necessities. ibid.
It cannot be an accident that the Theory of Evolution is conceived twice by two men living at the same time in the same culture – the culture of Queen Victoria in England. ibid.
Species are not immutable. ibid.
When he was twenty-five Wallace decided to become a full-time naturalist. ibid.
Wallace had never been further than Wales but he was not overawed by the exotic. ibid.
Alfred Wallace returned from the tropics as Darwin had done, convinced that related species diverged from a common stock and nonplussed as to why they diverged. What Wallace did not know was that Darwin had hit on the explanation two years after he returned to England. ibid.
Darwin ... A mind that did not want to face the public. ibid.
Wallace ... The same book by Malthus, and had the same explanation flash on him that had struck Darwin. ibid.
Darwin received Wallace’s paper here in his study at Down House in June 1858. ibid.
Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species and published it at the end of 1859. ibid.
Each one of us traces back through that evolutionary process. ibid.
We look more deeply at the chemistry we all share. ibid.
The Theory of Evolution is no longer a battleground: that’s because the evidence for it [is] so much richer and more varied now than in the days of Darwin and Wallace. ibid.
Between me and the chimpanzee there is just one difference in an amino acid ... The number of amino acid differences which is a measure of the evolutionary distance between me and the other mammals. ibid.
Proteins are the constituents of all living things. ibid.
Secluded in his rural laboratory Darwin’s manuscript on what he was already calling Natural Selection developed into an essay suitable for publication. Some of his text draw on the experiences he had on his round the world Beagle expedition. Out of the five years he spent on the voyage he had stayed just five weeks on the Galapagos Islands collecting specimens of plants and different species of mocking birds and finches. The significance of his Galapagos experience in the development of his theory has been overstated. Darwin’s Struggle: The Evolution of the Origin of Species, BBC 2009
Darwin’s 1844 manuscript was based on wide reading. From Milton’s Paradise Lost to the evolutionary speculations of his grandfather Erasmus and the radical French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. His great geologist mentor Charles Lyle taught him that the Earth’s surface had been formed gradually over countless ages. But it was the political economist Thomas Malthus who would stimulate the closest parallel to a eureka moment that Darwin would ever have. ibid.
In the late summer of 1859 Charles Darwin finally completed the last paragraph of his greatest work On the Origin of Species. ibid.
In the 1840s transmutation or evolution was still a radical idea, associated with social revolution. ibid.
To counter the creationists he became a beekeeper in order to show that near perfect hexagons in honeycombs were raised by instinct and not by design. ibid.
By 1844 Darwin had placed Malthus’s ideas on population at the core of his theory of national selection as a mechanism by which evolution occurred. The war of nature destroyed the weaklings. ibid.
The Beagle sailed around South America and into the Pacific. David Attenborough, Life on Earth I: The Infinite Variety, BBC 1979
The Galapagos Islands got their name from the herds of tortoises that live on them. ibid.
The suspicion grew in Darwin’s mind that species were not fixed for ever. ibid.
He called the mechanism Natural Selection. ibid.
The most spectacular explosion of biological diversity in the world. David Attenborough’s Galapagos: Evolution, ABC 2013
On September 16th 1835 HMS Beagle arrived in the Galapagos Islands. ibid.
Each [island] is a separate evolutionary community. ibid.
All the animals here are amazingly tame. ibid.