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Birthday of Darwin
Submitted by admin on 5 February, 2009 - 16:35
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Repeats every year until Thu Dec 31 2020 .
12 Feb 2010 Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. He set sail on the Beagle on December 31, 1831 and published The Origin of Species in 1859. He died on 19 April 1882
Charles Darwin came from a family interested in biology and the natural sciences. His father was Robert Darwin, a physician and his grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, a poet, philosopher and naturalist.
Darwin originally intended to study medicine but was unable to bear the sight of surgery performed without anesthesia. His second choice of career was as a clergyman but after taking a degree from Cambridge Univeristy, he began to focus more on naturalism, taking the position of naturalist aboard HMS Beagle, which set sail for the South Pacific at the end of 1831.
Darwin's experiences and research on the Beagle led to his development of a theory of evolution. He published his famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, leading to a storm of controversy which has not abated to this day.
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Celebrating Darwin
The season of celebration of Charles Darwin has engaged the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego. It extends over eighteen months.
It opened with the 150th anniversary of the reading of the Darwin-Wallace paper at the Linnean Society. We celebrated this with a banquet. It is surprising that the IHEU apparently did not do anything to mark the occasion, such as promoting or participating in the events of the Linnean Society. It was there in July 1859 that the Theory of Evolution was announced; only later was the book published.
Darwin's birthday in February was appropriately a major event and the occasion for worldwide celebrations. For our organization, it was a three-part weekend. We started out with group attendance at an orchestral performance of Franz Josef Haydn's "The Creation," a superb artistic telling of "the other side of the story," the Genesis account. The orchestra's management provided reserved seating and at intermission greeted our Humanist Fellowship by name in an announcement.
A luncheon meeting on Sunday was followed by a special presentation in one of the city's largest auditoriums. A video presentation on "Evolution, Science and Religion" by Phillip De Barros, from his television series, and a powerpoint show on the life of Charles Darwin by Cornell Jaray were followed by discussion from Stephen Baird and the playing and singing of one of his original songs on the subject of evolution.
Dr. Baird's work deserves to be better known. A teacher of evolutionary biology at the University of California Medical School, he has compiled many songs and his musical group "The Galapagos Mountain Boys" performs them in the style of American "bluegrass" folk song. You can hear samples of them on iTunes by searching on the name of the band, and they can be purchased there for download. His group also sells CDs of their songs.
Finally, we intend to wind up the Darwin season in November 2009 with commemoration of the publication of "Origin of Species." The major exhibit on Darwin from the American Museum of Natural History, New York, is coming to San Diego, and we are planning to integrate activities at the main Public Library with that exhibit at the Museum of Natural History.
We invite suggestions on how best to make use of this occasion and will welcome ideas from Humanists around the globe. Tell us what you have done and what works and what doesn't.
A likely activity will be the marathon reading of all or portions of "Origin" in a public place. We hear something of this kind has been performed at Harvard University. Observe that the admirers of James Joyce have successfully established readings of "Ulysses" worldwide as an annual "Bloomsday" event. Perhaps we can do likewise with Darwin.
Those interested in what is done by the Humanist Fellowship of San Diego can track our activities listed on our website www.HFSD.info and the Darwin Day site www.DarwinDay.org. We welcome feedback and ideas from Humanists elsewhere.