Science Forums 2

[Galapagos]

New videos of Richard Dawkins discussing Darwin on National Geographic:
Part 1:

YouTube - Professor Richard Dawkins on Darwin -...

The rest of the videos can be found on the above linked youtube channel, or on the NatGeo website:
National Geographic Channel UK - The Importance of Charles Darwin

Here's an article from NatGeo about the co-founder of NS, Alfred Russel Wallace:

Wallace ? National Geographic Magazine
The Man Who Wasn't Darwin
Alfred Russel Wallace charted a great dividing line in the living world—and found his own route to the theory of evolution.
By David Quammen

The island of Ternate is a small, graceful volcanic cone rising leafy green from the sea in northeastern Indonesia, 600 miles east of Borneo. Although it's an out-of-the-way place, tucked between much larger islands, Ternate was once an entrepôt of the Dutch empire, from which spices and other precious tropical commodities traveled westward by ship. Today its busy dock area, its fruit and fish markets, its mosques, its old forts, its sultan's palace, and its tidy concrete houses are strung like carousel lights along a single ring road that traces the coastline. Its upland slopes are mostly forested and unpopulated, and in those woods, if you're lucky, you might still spot a certain resplendent bird, emerald-breasted, with two long white plumes dangling capelike from each shoulder, whose scientific name—Semioptera wallacii—honors the man who first brought it to scientific attention. That man was Alfred Russel Wallace, a young English naturalist who did fieldwork throughout the Malay Archipelago in the late 1850s and early '60s. What you won't see on Ternate is any grand plaque or statue commemorating Wallace's place in scientific history or the fact that, from this little island, on March 9, 1858, he sent off a highly consequential letter, aboard a Dutch mail steamer headed westward.

Up next, a couple of articles from Forbes, but a word of warning before proceeding(read this first):
Pharyngula: For shame, Forbes magazine

Okay, so an article by Michael Shermer on Wallace from Forbes:

The Man In Darwin's Shadow - Forbes.com
The Man In Darwin's Shadow
Did Alfred Russel Wallace think up evolution first?
In March of 1858, a Welsh naturalist by the name of Alfred Russel Wallace was in the Malay Archipelago when he had a sudden realization that "there is a general principle in nature which will cause many varieties to survive the parent species and to give rise to successive variations, departing further and further from the original type."

Wallace jotted down his theory in an essay entitled, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" and on March 9, 1858, "sent it by the next post to Mr. Darwin."
When Charles Darwin received the package, he expressed his shock to his friend, the great geologist Charles Lyell, in a letter dated the "18th" and presumed to be June: "I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my manuscript sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short extract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters."

This is one of the great moments of independent discovery in the history of science.

Another good one by philosopher Michael Ruse:

In Praise Of A Beautiful Theory - Forbes.com
In Praise Of A Beautiful Theory
Why evolution matters today more than ever.

In this year, 2009, the 200th anniversary of the birth of English naturalist Charles Darwin, let us ask why we should care about evolution, the idea he championed in his book On the Origin of Species, published 150 years ago, in 1859.

The obvious and true answer is that evolution--the descent of all organisms, living and dead and including us humans, by a long, slow, natural process, from just a few forms--is one of the most striking discoveries of all time.

We must see the world, the living world in particular, as something gradually unfurling, interconnected in so many ways. And we must also see that we humans are part and parcel of this story.

Carl Zimmer posted a neat blog update over at the origins blog. This one is on extraterrestrial evolution():

Extraterrestrial Evolution - Origins
Extraterrestrial Evolution

Imagine you spent your whole life on a tiny island, with only some tortoises and snails to give you a clue to what life was like. You'd be forgiven for failing to imagine a Venus flytrap or an armadillo. Evolutionary biologists are in much the same bind. They are, for the time being, stuck on a planetary island, only able to study life on Earth. While life on Earth takes many forms, every living thing is nevertheless a variation on the common theme of DNA, RNA, and protein. What kind of life, if any—exists on other planetary islands we don't know?

More Darwin history for fans/buffs/addicts in a story from the AP:

The Associated Press: On Darwin's 200th, a theory still in controversy
On Darwin's 200th, a theory still in controversy
By GREGORY KATZ

LONDON (AP) — It's well known that Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution made many people furious because it contradicted the Biblical view of creation. But few know that it also created problems for Darwin at home with his deeply religious wife, Emma.

Darwin held back the book to avoid offending his wife, said Ruth Padel, the naturalist's great-great-granddaughter. "She said he seemed to be putting God further and further off," Padel said in her north London home. "But they talked it through, and she said, "Don't change any of your ideas for fear of hurting me.'"

The 1859 publication of "On the Origin of Species" changed scientific thought forever — and generated opposition that continues to this day. It is this elegant explanation of how species evolve through natural selection that makes Darwin's 200th birthday on Feb. 12 such a major event.