Razib Khan
Not even two full centuries have passed since Charles Darwin reluctantly lobbed his meticulously built grenade into Victorian society, averring in On the Origin of the Species, that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case.” In the intervening 166 years, not only has natural science gone from the almost exclusive pursuit of leisured English gentlemen like Darwin, to a complex, industrialized global knowledge production system churning out reams of data and theory by the minute, its millions of subsequent practitioners still have yet to “find such [a] case.” Darwin’s first-draft theories have proven almost miraculously robust and been profitably extended to illuminate both our deep past and our present.
Darwin’s insights marked a great leap forward for scientific theory. And the suite of fertile fields they spawned have continued to chart periodic great leaps forward ever since, including a truly miraculous one still unfolding today. Consider this discontinuity, though. Darwin could sit alone in his Down House study, mulling over the fruits of his copious correspondence with a small coterie of other curious minds, and indeed perhaps he alone was poised to not just posit evolution by means of natural selection (as Alfred Russell Wallace had done independently, spurring Darwin to set aside his book project and rush a paper out first to avoid being scooped) but to advocate for the nascent theory in volume after volume, beginning with the Origin of the Species. Today, truly no mind, however singular, works so independently.
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