Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin, February 12, 1809

Congratulations on your 200th birthday. Unlike the vast majority of us whose memory will fade within years or, at most decades, after our lives end, you and your theory of evolution remain active participants in today's scientific and social world. What a great day your birthday, February 12th, 1809 was! Two great, world-changing men were born that day. You share your birthday with Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. As you know, he was assassinated many years before you took your final sleep. While his birthday overshadows yours, no one has ever displaced you in the realm of scientific free thinking or controversy. Your birthday gifts are the gifts you shared with us through the two centuries following your birth.

The Galapagos Islands

"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection" Charles Darwin

The amazing variety of life on the Galapagos Islands fed your thoughts. You cataloged dozens of species, most native only to this archipelago. There is even a species of penguin living on these tropical islands. Because of your attention to them, the Galapagos have received more attention than other islands along the South American coast, maybe more than any other unpeopled islands. The attention has brought tourists and depredation but it has also brought your work, and controversy, to life in modern day images brought to our living rooms by your spiritual descendants. The Galapagos Islands are now heavily protected and the diverse life forms exist as a living lab and an example of nature's splendor.

The Monkey on Our Back

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." Charles Darwin

Perhaps if you had not written The Descent of Man, if you had not included humans in your theory, you might not be such a center of controversy. Too many humans cannot accept that they, too, are a part of the natural order of life. This gift brings us modern anthropology, arguments about creationism and its descendant, intelligent design. It brought us the Scopes Monkey Trial, drawings of monkey to man, lively debate in virtually every nook and cranny of society.

Free Thinking

"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s,] to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act." Charles Darwin

Whether we agree with you or not, your theories have brought natural science into classrooms and churches. Those who hate your theories have had to, ironically, evolve creationism into intelligent design. Your theories help us make sense of Australopithecus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. You brought understanding of all the different breeds of dogs, cattle, horses. Most of all you showed us how a creative brain thinks, allowing a freedom for your intellectual descendants.

Happy birthday and many, many happy returns.

Sources and further reading:

http://www.darwin-literature.com

http://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/

http://darwin-online.org.uk/