In case you didn’t know, Charles Darwin was an English naturalist who lived from 1802 to 1882. He was the grandson of abolitionists, a father of ten, a beetle collector, an agnostic, a pigeon breeder, and a geologist. He didn’t always have a huge bushy beard.
Q&A about My Darwin Project
Q: What is this Darwin Project?
A: It’s my own ongoing endeavor to read Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. But I don’t want to stop there. Alfred Russel Wallace and Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin and many others also studied and wrote about evolution, and now of course there is a mountain of evidentiary literature on the subject. I’m compiling an assortment of books and articles on science, biology, and evolution, while listing videos and web resources along the way and madly blogging.
Q: What are these books and resources you mention?
A: Well, I’m putting together this list which is by no means definitive or authoritative, and I urge you to do your own research, but I’m including anything I have found interesting, aggravating, enlightening and educational on my page Darwin’s Entangled Bibliography.
Q: How long have you been doing this? Are you getting paid?
A: Hahahahaaaaaa. I am not getting paid. I’m doing this project for my own personal edification, and blogging about it is way for me to stick to a timeline. Also, writing about Darwin and evolution will help me learn. I officially started the project in March 2015. It’s a lifelong educational thing.
“Charles and William Darwin” Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
“Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron 3” by Julia Margaret Cameron – Scanned from Colin Ford’s Julia Margaret Cameron: 19th Century Photographer of Genius, ISBN 1855145065. Originally from Royal Photographic Society. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
“Origin of Species” Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
This page is also a growing compendium of all my resources for My Darwin Project.
Click on the Feather for links to all my Darwin Project blog posts. See below for a growing gallery of books, videos, audiobooks, and articles. Note that since embarking on this project many years ago, I’ve added the study of virology to My Darwin Project. Okay, I’ve added…pretty much everything Science-y to My Darwin Project.
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
~ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
The amount of books and reference materials on Evolution is enormous. Hello! Yes, it’s a THEORY, but the mountain of biological, botanical, and geological evidence for this theory knocks it out of the park. I picked three dozen or so books that I want to read, which is by no means a definitive bibliography, but it might help get me started. Go visit my Goodreads Darwin Project and Virus pages, and check out the gallery above – click on any image to explore further.
Wikipedia also has a complete Bibliography of the Works of Charles Darwin.
Articles
In this Orion Magazine feature, “Defending Darwin,” James Krupa – impassioned and pragmatic – describes teaching his class on evolutionary biology at the University of Kentucky.
David Quammen is an eloquent and funny popular science writer whose National Geographic article “Was Darwin Wrong?” discusses evolution as theory and fact. This is an engaging overview of evolution and natural selection.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science assembled this meaty collection of articles published by Science magazine in 2009, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Brainpickings.org always has interesting articles at the intersection of philosophy, science, and the arts. Here’s a detailed post about Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit, helpful for learning how to be a canny science reader. And here’s a quick overview of the critical thinking checklist known as Prospero’s Precepts. Or how about a concise LiveScience post that asks What is a Scientific Theory?
Websites
Check out my Darwin Project Pinterest Board. I am always on the hunt for beautiful infographics that explain evolution properly, instead of that oversimplified and misleading ape-to-man image we’ve all seen.
The Berkeley Evolution website is absolutely amazing. Clearly written with simple to follow diagrams and links. I started with Evolution 101 and traveled from there.
PBS also has an evolution website – I started at their FAQ page – a short, no-nonsense jumping off point.
The American Museum of Natural History has a Darwin Manuscripts Project.
The HMS Beagle Project helps you enjoy the ship’s famous second voyage with a mapped summary of each port of call. I’m totally digging this.
The Beagle Project is everything you could ever want to know about Darwin’s round-the-world trip. It’s like footnote heaven in the shape of a blog.
Oooh, the Tree of Life web project. Because evolution is a tree, not a ladder. If you want to dive deeper (climb higher?) I’m also reading David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree. Read with me?
Also for the serious scholar, Darwin Online is hard to surpass. The enormity of Darwin’s research, journals, and observations is staggering.
Check out the Gutenberg project and read The Origin of Species on your laptop or e-reader. (Yes, you can read Darwin for free!)
For the price (free from the iBooks store) and the lovely images, take a look at E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth. Biodiversity at its most gorgeous and comprehensible, in seven ebook volumes and as an iTunes U Course.
The Smithsonian has an excellent Human Origins website with lots of Q&A, illustrations, and videos.
About Darwin – A way bigger DIY Darwin website than I could ever dream of doing.
The American Geological Institute’s guide to Evolution and the Fossil Record.
Scitable’s webpage about Dating Rocks and Fossils.
Video
Yale has a free online course in Evolution that is informative, challenging, and entertaining. There are 36 Lectures, basically the EEB 122 course at Yale University – you’re right there in the lecture hall – exploring evolution from Darwin to present day genetic discoveries. Pretend you’re Ivy League material (at least, that’s what I do).
Richard Dawkins looooves to gab about Darwin, and you can watch all three videos in his series The Genius of Charles Darwin for free on Youtube.
Darwitty
Intriguing, strange and unexpected Darwinian miscellany from anywhere (but mostly the interwebs).
The Appendix reports on the whimsical drawings that Darwin’s children made on his manuscripts.
The rap guide to Evolution by means of Natural Selection. Geek rapper Baba Brinkman tells you what.
Redrafting The Voyage of the Beagle as a blog?
Darwin’s cousin invented the dog whistle…and full disclosure – unfortunately, eugenics too.
Watch this kooky satire from Philomena Cunk.
Satellite photo of the Galapagos Islands from Wikimedia Commons