We now have members in 82 countries.

Eleanor & Charlie Armitage

New to our childrens’ book reviews section, a review of What Mr Darwin Saw, a beautifully illustrated book about Charles Darwin. The review was written by a person highly qualified for the role: Eleanor Armitage, aged 7.

Very good work again, Eleanor!

February 20th. – This day has been memorable in the annals of Valdivia, for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes, but the time appeared much longer. The rocking of the ground was very sensible. The undulations appeared to my companion and myself to come from due east, whilst others thought they proceeded from south-west: this shows how difficult it sometimes is to perceive the directions of the vibrations. There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy: it was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross-ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; – one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. In the forest, as a breeze moved the trees, I felt only the earth tremble, but saw no other effect. Captain Fitz Roy and some officers were at the town during the shock, and there the scene was more striking; for although the houses, from being built of wood, did not fall, they were violently shaken, and the boards creaked and rattled together. The people rushed out of doors in the greatest alarm. It is these accompaniments that create that perfect horror of earthquakes, experienced by all who have thus seen, as well as felt, their effects. Within the forest it was a deeply interesting, but by no means an awe- exciting phenomenon. The tides were very curiously affected. The great shock took place at the time of low water; and an old woman who was on the beach told me that the water flowed very quickly, but not in great waves, to high- water mark, and then as quickly returned to its proper level; this was also evident by the line of wet sand. The same kind of quick but quiet movement in the tide happened a few years since at Chiloe, during a slight earthquake, and created much causeless alarm. In the course of the evening there were many weaker shocks, which seemed to produce in the harbour the most complicated currents, and some of great strength.

The earthquake that Darwin witnessed first-hand in 1835 destroyed the town of Concepcíon. Here’s hoping today’s massive Concepción earthquake is less severe.

In the evening, that is, after he had read as much as his strength would allow, and before the reading aloud began, he would often lie on the sofa and listen to my mother playing the piano. He had not a good ear, yet in spite of this he had a true love of fine music. He used to lament that his enjoyment of music had become dulled with age, yet within my recollection his love of a good tune was strong. I never heard him hum more than one tune, the Welsh song “Ar hyd y nos,” which he went through correctly;

Ar hyd y nos—better known to us heathen English as All Through the Night—is a classic Welsh folk tune. Perhaps Darwin was familiar with it having been brought up near the Welsh border.

I think it’s delightful that we know which tune Darwin used to hum to himself. Especially since it is such a wonderful, moving tune:

Happy 201st birthday, Mr D.

Iechyd da!

Unfortunately, you can’t download the programmes as mp3 files to listen to in your car (I have a work-around, but it’s complicated), some of the older programmes are only available in crappy RealPlayer™ format, and you need to be in the UK to listen to the programmes (unless you can figure out how to access the BBC iPlayer via a proxy server)—but, despite these reservations, this is a very big move by the Beeb.

Some programmes I shall enjoy listening to again include:

Baconian Science
On the Jacobean thinker Francis Bacon and Baconian Science.

Calculus
The dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented calculus.

Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin
Darwin’s early life in Shropshire and his three years at Cambridge.

Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle
How Darwin’s work during the Beagle expedition influenced his theories.

Darwin: On the Origin of Species
How Darwin was eventually persuaded to publish On the Origin of Species in November 1859.

Darwin: Life After Origins
Melvyn visits Darwin’s home at Down House in Kent.

Electrickery
On the dawn of the age of electricity.

Evolution
On the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology.

Human Evolution
On the six million year old story of human evolution.

Human Origins
On the evolution of the human species.

Humboldt
On the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt.

Lamarck and Natural Selection
On Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French precursor to Darwin.

Mammals
On the rise of the mammals which began 65 million years ago.

Maxwell
The work and legacy of the often overlooked 19th century scientist James Clerk Maxwell.

Nature
On the attempt to define humanity’s part in the natural world.

Plate Tectonics
On plate tectonics, a theory that transformed our idea of the earth.

Popper
On the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper.

Science’s Revelations
On whether science has ruined our sense of poetic wonder at the world.

The Cambrian Period
On the Cambrian period, when there was an explosion of life on Earth.

The Geological Formation of Britain
On the geological formation of Britain.

The KT Boundary
On the KT Boundary and the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The Lunar Society
On the 18th century group of pioneering scientists and engineers.

The Natural Order
On the science of taxonomy; the classification of the natural world.

The Origins of Life
On when and how life on earth originated.

The Permian-Triassic Boundary
On the Permian-Triassic boundary in evolutionary history.

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 1
Melvyn Bragg travels to Oxford, where the young Christopher Wren and friends experimented.

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 2
How Newton tested the lines between government-funded research and public access.

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 3
The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist societies.

The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 4
The more discreet role played by the Society in the 20th century.

The Scientist
On the origin of the concept and the historical role of the scientist.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics
On the Second Law of Thermodynamics from steam to the Big Bang.

The Whale – A History
On the evolutionary history of the whale.

We now have members in 81 countries.

We now have members in 80 countries.

Colin, the card’s in the post.

We now have members in 79 countries.

The United Nations has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. Good for them: I endorse this decision wholeheartedly.

But the UN isn’t the only organisation which gets to classify years. To mark the centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale, some have chosen to promote 2010 as the International Year of the Nurse, while the South African Sports Minister has dubbed it the International Year of African Football. The Chinese, as is their wont, will be referring to most of 2010 as the Year of the Tiger.

So how will the Friends of Charles Darwin be referring to 2010, I hear you ask. Silly question, if I might say so…

The Friends of Charles Darwin hereby declare 2010 to be Darwin Year.

As all true Darwin groupies know, every year is Darwin Year.

• The surprise punctuationist
• His view of life
• God endorses Darwin!
• Curious minds
• The Moor Walk
• That’s Magic!
• No, no, no! I said, ‘Let’s SEX up this Darwinius press release!’
• Finally, a half-decent swallow photo!
• Darwin’s room
• Baby’s first podcast
• Darwin’s wen
• Darwin and Dawkins stand shoulder-to-shoulder
• Nature waiting

… and here are a couple I wrote for the Beagle Project blog:

• Review: Darwin’s Sacred Cause
• Keel Overhauled: 175 years ago, a rather ticklish operation

My New Year’s Resolution? More and better posts next year, I hope.

“Have you got the book Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, volume two?” she asked.
“No, what’s it about?”
“It’s an old book about animals and stuff. It’s right up your street. Would you like it for a Christmas present?”
Stupid question.

And here it is:

Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, Vol. II

Good grief, I owe Stense big-style for this one. It’s a wonderful book, packed with semi-archaic descriptions of animals, which will provide me with many hours of amusement. The book’s full title is, rather magnificently:

A History of the Earth and Animated Nature

by Oliver Goldsmith

With an Introductory View of the Animal Kingdom by

Baron Cuvier;

Copious Notes of Discoveries in Natural History;

And a Life of the Author;

by Washington Irving

Vol. II

The author is the same Oliver Goldsmith who wrote The Vicar of Wakefield, She Stoops to Conquer and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes. The book first appeared in eight volumes in 1774, and there were over 20 subsequent editions, some of which were magnificently illustrated (the illustrations appear to have been cut out of my copy by some print-selling vandal). The book became a popular source of information about the natural world.

Two items which immediately caught my eye: Goldsmith’s section on The Whale, and its Varieties appears in Part Fourth of the book—being the part about Fishes! And the section on the Dodo talks about the creature in the present tense—although a post script notes that the truly grotesque bird has now become extinct, and its former existence has been called into question by some writers.

Expect some snippets/extracts from Goldsmith’s Animated Nature in the next few months. In the meantime, thank you once again, Stense, for the wonderful present!

Stense in her natural environment

I find it interesting that the English language does not seem to have an equivalent word to philistine for people who are hostile or indifferent to science. In fact, I think it speaks volumes. While it is simply unacceptable to say that you don’t like music, or find Shakespeare so intolerably dull that it nauseates you, people go blissfully unchallenged when they chirpily announce (as they frequently do) that they never understood maths at school, or can’t see the point of physics.

An Unenlightened individual yesterday.

It seems to me that we need a word to describe scientific philistines. The word needs to encompass people who actively dislike science (creationists, Daily Mail journalists, etc.), those who are poorly educated in the subject (believers in homeopathy, would-be patenters of perpetual motion machines, etc.), and those just not interested in it (most of the rest of humanity, it sometimes seems). And we need the word to be judgemental: a label which it is not a good thing to be in a scientifically literate society. But, while the word needs to be judgemental, it mustn’t be too derogatory. There is still hope for the vast majority of scientific philistines (excluding Daily Mail journalists, obviously).

What seems clear is that these individuals, be they the pitiable variety or the reprehensible variety, missed the train when the Enlightenment Express was pulling out of the station.

So I propose to refer to them in future as The Unenlightened.

The other week, I came up with a frankly ridiculous hypothesis (I won’t dignify it with the description theory) about starlings [Sturnus vulgaris]. Ridiculous and fanciful though it undoubtedly is, I record it here, in the unlikely event that it turns out to be true, so that nobody else can take credit for thinking it up. It’s a priority issue:

A starling on my chimney pot

Starlings (or European starlings, to give them their international name, as we’re supposed to these days) are reasonably accomplished mimics. Not as accomplished, it must be said, as their close cousins the mynahs, but they have been known to imitate the sounds of other birds—and, indeed, man-made objects. As a child in the 70s, I well remember the local starlings’ occasionally imitating a neighbour’s Trimphone. In later years, as technology advanced, their descendants took to calling out like car alarms—a habit which seems to have died out as car alarms became more reliable, emitting false alarms much less frequently.

The collective noun for starlings is a murmuration. Indeed, when the birds congregate in the winter months and settle to roost, they do murmur incessantly to each other. But in amongst the murmurs, there are subdued snap, crackle and popping noises. The overall effect is uncannily like the noise made by Dr Frankenstein’s electrical apparatus just before he throws the master switch, or, less fancifully, a high-tension electrical transmission line.

Which is where my ridiculous hypothesis comes in. I am wondering whether the modern-day murmuration of starlings incorporates elements of electrical snap, crackle and pop, picked up by these semi-accomplished mimics as they gather for a murmur on electrical transmission lines.

No, I don’t think so either.

A cliché yesterday:
Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

A Merry Christmas to one and all.

In my dreams, maybe.

Full story here.

But, as we all know, 24th November, 1859 was no typical day in Darwin’s quack water treatment. It was the day on which his most famous book was published. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life sold out on its first day, and has never been out of print since. It is a classic text. Arguably one of the most important books in the history of science. And, rather surprisingly, it is still remarkably accessible to the lay reader…

What do you mean, you’ve never read On the Origin of Species? Surely you jest! Really? You really haven’t read On the Origin of Species? Trust me, it’s not that hard. OK, so maybe it isn’t exactly a page-turner, but we’re talking about one of the great revolutionary books here—and it’s written in plain English, for ordinary mortals like you and me. You certainly can’t say that about Newton’s Principia. In fact, I’m struggling to think of another revolutionary scientific text you can say that about.

Yes, Origin is dated in one or two places—and plain wrong in one or two more—but Darwin’s great work has withstood the trials and tribulations of the last 150 years remarkably well. The gentle genius’s long argument still hold true. More so than ever, in fact, as we now have 150 years of extra evidence to back it up.

So if you consider yourself a Darwin groupie, or simply well-read, yet you still haven’t read the great man’s most important work, why not make today’s 150th anniversary of its publication the perfect excuse to start reading the damn thing?

You never know, you might just learn something.

Had he not died so tragically young, Carl Sagan would have been 75 today.

In recent weeks, I have been working my way slowly through the newly remastered DVD boxed-set of Sagan’s landmark television series, Cosmos. It’s every bit as inspirational as it was when I first (and last) watched it as a schoolboy back in 1980. My late mother would no doubt agree—although she would not mean it as a compliment.

Every week, as I sat in front of our telly, transfixed by Sagan’s ongoing voyage of discovery amongst the billions and billions of stars in his space-ship of the imagination, mum would be fighting to stay awake. She found Carl’s low, mellow voice incredibly soporific—although that wasn’t the word mum used to describe it; a drone was how mum described it.

Don’t get me wrong: mum thought Carl was lovely; he just sent her to sleep, that’s all.

One week, mum decided to stop fighting it and took herself to bed. I continued watching telly, pretty much oblivious. Then, 20 minutes or so later, mum came tearing down the stairs in her night-dress, and ran into the kitchen. Then I heard her laughing:

“It’s that droney American’s voice!” she laughed. “I thought the fridge was about to explode!”

We miss you, Carl. I miss you, mum.

 
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