Happy Birthday Mr Darwin

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

امروز، پنجشنبه 12 فوریه دویستمین سالگرد تولد چارلز داروین، دانشمند بریتانیایی است. به همین مناسبت برنامه های مختلفی برای یادبود او در این کشور برگزار می شود.

او نظریه تکامل را تدوین کرد و درک ما را از جهان هستی برای همیشه دگرگون کرد.

چارلز رابرت داروین روز 12 فوریه 1809 در روستای شروزبری، استان شراپشایر در انگلستان متولد شد. او خانواده ای متمول و با نفوذ داشت.

داروین در ابتدا قصد داشت رشته پزشکی را دنبال کند و در دانشگاه ادینبورگ آغاز به تحصیل کرد اما مدتی بعد به دانشگاه کمبریج رفت. در سال 1831 سفر اکتشافی خود را در کشتی ' بیگل ' شروع کرد و به مدت 5 سال به تحقیق و سفرهای خود ادامه داد.

در آنزمان بیشتر اروپاییان فکر می کردند همانطور که در انجیل آمده، جهان در هفت روز توسط خدا خلق شده است. یکی از کتابهایی که داروین در طول سفرش خواند، ' قاعده زمین شناسی' نوشته 'لایلز ' بود. در این کتاب به کشف فسیل هایی اشاره شده بود که نشان می داد گونه هایی از جانداران میلیون ها سال پیش زندگی می کردند.


جزایر گالاپاگوس به لاک پشت های عظیمش معروف است
مطالعات داروین با گونه های متنوع حیوانات و خصوصیاتی وابسته به علم زمین شناسی که در طول سفرش مشاهده کرد، مطابقت داشت.

اما نظریات او هنگامی شکل گرفت که از مجمع الجزایر گالاپاگوس در آمریکای جنوبی دیدن کرد. اين جزاير آتشفشانی که از جمله به لاک پشت های عظيم الجثه خود شناخته می شود در اقيانوس آرام و در غرب اکوادور قرار دارد.

داروین دید که هر یک از جزیره ها دارای نوعی پرنده فینچ است که در عین تشابه، خصوصیاتی کاملا متفاوت دارند.

داروین هنگام بازگشت به انگلستان در سال 1836 سعی کرد معمای چگونگی تکامل جانوران را حل کند. او با الهام گرفتن از تئوری های 'مالتوس' این نظریه را مطرح کرد که احتمال بقا و تولید مثل حیوانات و گیاهانی که با محیط زیست خود تطابق بیشتری دارند، بیشتر است.


فینچ های داروین
این گونه ها به شیوه انتخاب طبیعی خصوصیاتی را که به بقای آنها کمک کرده به نسل های بعدی منتقل می کنند و به این ترتیب به مرور زمان تکامل پیدا می کنند.

داروین بیست سال درباره نظریه خود تحقیق کرد. بعد از آنکه متوجه شد یک محقق دیگر به نام 'آلفرد راسل والاس' نیز نظریه های مشابهی را مطرح کرده است، هر دو با هم در سال 1858 مکاشفات خود را اعلام کردند.

چارلز داروین کتاب پر اهمیتش به نام "در باب سرمنشا گونه ها به شیوه انتخاب طبیعی" را در سال 1859 منتشر کرد.

کتاب او بسیار جنجال برانگیز بود، چون نتیجه منطقی تئوری داروین این است که انسانها نیز گونه ای از حیوانات، احتمالا میمون ها، هستند که به مرور زمان تکامل یافته اند.

این نظریه با آنچه از پیدایش خلقت در انجیل آمده کاملا در تضاد است و باعث شد کلیسا به شدت به داروین حمله کند. البته دیری نپایید که این نظریه به یکی از ارکان اساسی علم زیست شناسی تبدیل شد و بر رشته های دیگر علمی نیز تاثیر گذاشت.

داروین روز 19 آوریل 1882 در گذشت و در کلیسای وست مینستر ابی در لندن دفن شد.

[Rasputin]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4471435322910215458

[Rasputin]

This fall, evolutionary biologist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins -- most recently famous for his public exhortation to atheism, "The God Delusion" -- returns to writing about science. Dawkins' new book, "The Greatest Show on Earth," will inform and regale us with the stunning "evidence for evolution," as the subtitle says. It will surely be an impressive display, as Dawkins excels at making the case for evolution. But it's also fair to ask: Who in the United States will read Dawkins' new book (or ones like it) and have any sort of epiphany, or change his or her mind?

Surely not those who need it most: America's anti-evolutionists. These religious adherents often view science itself as an assault on their faith and doggedly refuse to accept evolution because they fear it so utterly denies God that it will lead them, and their children, straight into a world of moral depravity and meaninglessness. An in-your-face atheist touting evolution, like Dawkins, is probably the last messenger they'll heed.

Dawkins will, however, be championed by many scientists, especially the most secular -- those who were galvanized by "The God Delusion" and inspired by it to take a newly confrontational approach toward America's religious majority. They will help ensure Dawkins another literary success. It's certainly valuable to have the case for evolution articulated prominently and often, but what this unending polarization around evolution and religion does for the standing of science in the U.S. is a very different matter.

It often appears as though Dawkins and his followers -- often dubbed the New Atheists, though some object to the term -- want to change the country's science community in a lasting way. They'd have scientists and defenders of reason be far more confrontational and blunt: No more coddling the faithful, no tolerating nonscientific beliefs. Scientific institutions, in their view, ought to stop putting out politic PR about science and religion being compatible.

The New Atheists win the battle easily on the Internet. Their most prominent blogger, the University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers, runs what is probably the Web's most popular science blog, Pharyngula, where he and his readers attack and belittle religious believers, sometimes using highly abrasive language. Or as Myers put it to fanatical Catholics at one point: "Don't confuse the fact that I find you and your church petty, foolish, twisted and hateful to be a testimonial to the existence of your petty, foolish, twisted, hateful god."


More moderate scientists, however -- let us call them the accommodationists -- still dominate the hallowed institutions of American science. Personally, these scientists may be atheists, agnostics or believers; whatever their views on the relationship between science and religion, politically, spiritually and practically they see no need to fight over it.

Thus the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences take the stance that science and religion can be perfectly compatible -- and are regularly blasted for it by the New Atheists. Or as the National Academy of Sciences put it in a recent volume on evolution and creationism: "Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth's history. ... Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts."

A smaller but highly regarded nonprofit organization called the National Center for Science Education has drawn at least as much of the New Atheists' ire, however. Based in Oakland, the center is the leading organization that promotes and defends the teaching of evolution in school districts across the country.

In this endeavor, it has, of necessity, made frequent alliances with religious believers who also support the teaching of evolution, seeking to forge a broad coalition capable of beating back the advances of fundamentalists who want to weaken textbooks or science standards. In the famous 2005 Dover, Pa., evolution trial, for instance, the NCSE contributed scientific advice to a legal team that put a theologian and a Catholic biologist on the stand.



Long under fire from the religious right, the NCSE now must protect its other flank from the New Atheist wing of science. The atheist biologist Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, for instance, has drawn much attention by assaulting the center's Faith Project, which seeks to spread awareness that between creationism on the one hand and the new atheism on the other lie many more moderate positions.

In this, Coyne is once again following the lead of Dawkins, who in "The God Delusion" denounces the NCSE as part of the "Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists," those equivocators who defend the science but refuse to engage with what the New Atheists perceive as the real root of the problem -- namely, religious belief.

It all might sound like a petty internecine squabble, but the stakes are very high. The United States does not boast a very healthy relationship between its scientific community and its citizenry. The statistics on public scientific illiteracy are notorious -- and they're at their worst on contentious, politicized issues such as climate change and the teaching of evolution. About 46% of Americans in polls agree with this stunning statement: "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so."

In this context, the New Atheists have chosen their course: confrontation. And groups like the NCSE have chosen the opposite route: Work with all who support the teaching of evolution regardless of their beliefs, and attempt to sway those who are uncertain but perhaps convincible.

Despite the resultant bitterness, however, there is at least one figure both sides respect -- the man who started it all: Charles Darwin. What would he have done in this situation?

It turns out that late in life, when an atheist author asked permission to dedicate a book to Darwin, the great scientist wrote back his apologies and declined. For as Darwin put it, "Though I am a strong advocate for free thought on all subjects, yet it appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science."

Darwin and Dawkins differ by much more than a few letters, then -- something the New Atheists ought to deeply consider.

Chris Mooney and Sheril ***shenbaum are coauthors of the new book, "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future."