18Mar 2023 by Post

Darwin and Agassiz: An Imaginary Picture

Adrian Desmond, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Charleston, correspondence, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Evolution, history, Intelligent Design, James Moore, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Lake Superior, primary sources, Races of Man, Racism, Royal Agricultural College, S. P. Woodward, Sacred Cause (series), slavery, United States
Given the close relationship Louis Agassiz shared with pro-slavery factions in the South, Desmond and Moore focus much on Darwin’s relationship with Agassiz. Source
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12Jul 2021 by Post

The Casual Racism of Charles Darwin

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Abraham Lincoln, Adrian Desmond, Africa, Allison Hopper, anti-racism, Charles Darwin, Culture & Ethics, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Descent of Man, Edinburgh, Emma Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Great Emancipator, Harriet Martineau, Human Origins, James Moore, N-word, Racism, slavery, slaves, Victorian England
It is certainly startling to see the N-word cropping up in Darwin’s letters, but this is not the only place. Source
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10Feb 2021 by Post

Darwin and Race: Three Strikes, He’s Out

Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages, Anglo-Saxons, Applied Eugenics, Artificial Selection, Black History Month, Charles Darwin, Charles Kingsley, Culture & Ethics, Darwin Day, Darwin Deleted, Darwins Struggle for Survival, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Descent of Man, eugenics, Europeans, Evolution, extermination, humankind, J. Barnard Davis, Jean Gayon, national expansion, Origin of Species, Paul Broca, Paul Popenoe, Peter Bowler, racial equality, racial superiority, Racism, Roswell Hill Johnson, William Graham
February is Black History Month, and this week, Friday, February 12, is Darwin Day — the birthday of Charles Darwin. Source
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03Jan 2020 by Post

Himmelfarb and Her Haters

10 Books That Screwed Up the World, Adrian Desmond, Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrew Dickson White, Bea Kristol, Benjamin Wiker, Borneo, Bridgewater Treatises, Charles Darwin, Charles Gillispie, Charles Kingsley, City University of New York, Cornell University, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Darwinists, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Dyak headhunters, Edward T. Oakes, Encounter (journal), Ernst Mayr, Eugenics Record Office, Evolution, Francis Galton, George Will, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Harry Bruinius, history, Jacques Barzun, James D. Watson, James Moore, Jeffrey Shallit, Jewish Women, John William Draper, Julian Huxley, Leo Strauss, Mein Kampf, P.Z. Myers, Panda's Thumb, Uaupés River Valley, Victorian England
Editor’s note: Historian and Darwin skeptic Gertrude Himmelfarb died on Monday, December 30, 2019. While mourning the passing of this great scholar, we are pleased to republish Professor Flannery’s 2009 essay, below. See also Flannery’s tribute, ‘Farewell to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Brutally Honest Historian of the “Darwinian Revolution.’” “If you have no enemies, it is a sign fortune has forgot you.” — Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732  Noted physician Thomas Fuller was an expert on “eruptive fevers,” and so it seems fitting to open this essay with his wry but telling observation on enemies in public life, for perhaps no contemporary historian has spawned more “eruptive fever” over an analysis of the reigning secular creation myth demigod, Charles Darwin, than has the present subject of this essay. If Fuller is any judge,…
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