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Is Darwinism Past its ‘Sell-By’ Date? The Origin of Species at 150

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2010

Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA. E-mail: mruse@fsu.edu
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Abstract

Not only was the year 2009 the year when we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the English naturalist Charles Darwin, but it was also the year when we celebrated his greatest book, the Origin of Species, published then 150 years ago. The question I ask here is whether we are really celebrating the Origin of Species, for its own sake, or whether we are using it as a symbol, as a tool – perhaps Darwin himself also – for today’s arguments. Do we really care about the Origin, about what is in it, or is it just a name, standing for ideas we hold dear but which are possibly quite unknown, and perhaps even alien, to Darwin’s thinking?

Type
Focus: Evolution
Information
European Review , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 311 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2010

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