As most naturalists do, I like to stop for at least a few moments on anniversaries of particular scientific significance in order to acknowledge and contemplate what or who that anniversary commemorates and where we would be had that thing not happened or that person not been born. Such a day is 12 February, the date on which Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was born.
And as I’m a rather bookish sort – as I’m sure you’ve noticed – I find it most appropriate on such days as this to open up and read at least a bit from one of the many works through which Darwin conveyed to the world his many discoveries, as well as his at least as numerous questions, about the natural world he dedicated his life to trying to understand.
For ease of accessibility, I generally take down my copy of From So Simple a Beginning, the E. O. Wilson edited volume of four of Darwin’s best known books – Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle (1845), The Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) – published together under one cover by W.W. Norton in 2010.
However as I’ve also acquired over the years a few volumes of the magnificent New York University Press published twenty-nine volume set of Darwin’s complete works, some years see me with one of his lesser well known works in my hands as I drift off into blissful and most heartily grateful contemplation of his life and ideas.
