Darwin Day & The Evolution of A Quote

Darwin is famous for his insights in to natural selection and evolution, little could he know that he would also be famous for quotes that evolved  ;)  . Darwin's quotes have taken on a life and evolution of their own... Darwin is frequently misquoted, especially about natural selection ...

The entire quote by Darwin from "On the Origin of Species" -

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”


Darwin also commented in "On the Origin of Species" -

“I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”
...which is where we got the phrase "survival of the fittest".


...and, at a convention in 1963, a professor at Louisiana State University, Leon Megginson, interpreted Darwin -

" According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself."

...which he followed up, in 1964, with streamlining to -

"It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself……so says Charles Darwin in his “Origin of Species.”"

Get Down and Celebrate Dirt! (aka Happy World SOIL Day!)

"Essentially, all life depends upon the soil... 

There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; 

they have evolved together."

-Charles E. Kellogg

Happy Soil Day! credit: M. Barnes

Celebrate what Makes you YOU! It's International DNA Day!

Similar to how letters form words, bases form the genetic code that creates genes.

International DNA Day April 25.
Today, in 1952, James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, et al published papers in Nature (the journal) on the structure of DNA. 
It is also the day (in 2003) that the Human Genome Project was declared nearly complete and "the remaining tiny gaps [were] considered too costly to fill."

DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid.
The bases can be thought of like letters in an alphabet; as letters can be combined to create many words, the sequences of bases create the language of the genes. 

The Confluence: Dabbling in the Waters of Leonardo da Vinci

"Water is the driving force in nature."

~Leonardo da Vinci~

Leonardo daVinci, Notes on the Movement/Physics of Water.

 Confluence: (n) a flowing together or meeting of two or more things at a common point.

Leonardo daVinci is confluence personified: an artist, scientist, inventor, engineer, musician, and architect with a constant sense of questing.

Leonardo was fascinated with water, wanting to comprehend it's nature, properties, how it shaped nature, and how to control and use it. Water inspired his art/music, science, sense of wonder, and his urge to invent and engineer.



He often compared the flow of water to the flow of blood, rivers to veins, and used these workings to understand both systems better.

daVinci, Studies of Water Moving, 1508-09.

 

Leonardo studied and sketched water throughout his life, one of his early sketches shows his study of the Arno River (Italy), including the movement of water. Other sketches and notes show his scientific approach to understanding water.

Leonardo daVinci, 1473, Study of a Tuscan Landscape, Arno River.

Da Vinci mapped water as it impacted people:

(click maps for larger images)

 and landscapes:















Many of his inventions and engineering studies dealt with water:



















 and how we could potentially *capture* it.

My personal favorite?
How could it not be

da Vinci's underwater breathing device?

 Do you have a favorite?

Leonardo daVinci also explored expressing music through *capturing* water, here is a peek at the NOVUS build of the water organ designed daVinci (Chuck Zimmerman's YouTube):

A version  of the water organ that you can hear *playing*, built by Joaquin Saura following daVinci's sketches, plans and discussion found in the Madrid Codex II at the National Library in Madrid (Joaquin Saura's YouTube).

Leonardo da Vinci also used water to help capture some of his more symbolic and fantastical musings:

Leonardo's Allegory of Bull, Wolf, and Eagle.

Leonardo's sketch Neptune, 1504-05

 Da Vinci's association with water is something that I think many of us feel, a connection.
I'll leave you with a some final thoughts from da Vinci, 2 quotes:

" Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and sometimes bitter, 

sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous. It suffers change into as many natures as are the different places through which it passes. And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject, 

so it alters with the nature of the place, becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty, incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim. 

Sometimes it starts a conflagration, sometimes it extinguishes one; is warm and is cold, 

carries away or sets down, hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, fills or empties, 

raises itself or burrows down, speeds or is still; is the cause at times of life or death, 

or increase or privation, nourishes at times and at others does the contrary; at times has a tang, 

at times is without savor, sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods. 

In time and with water, everything changes. "

~ ~ ~

" The body of the earth is of the nature of a fish ...  

because it draws water as its breath instead of air. "

Leonardo da Vinci- 15 April, 1452 to 2 May 1519.

da Vinci on Water

Happy Darwin Day!!!!

Today is Charles Darwin's 207th birthday, and seems like an absolutely perfect day to really get Quest off the ground.

As we all know, Charles Darwin was the father of modern evolutionary biology. Darwin wasn't responsible for the idea that life changes over time, but he (well, and Alfred Russel Wallace, but it's not his birthday!) was responsible for proposing and supporting the theory of evolution by natural selection (or as you may have heard of it, "survival of the fittest") and many of the mechanisms by which we know evolution to work.

You have probably heard about Darwin and his finches, but have you heard of Darwin's fossils? As an evolutionary and quasi-paleobiologist, I think it is important to take a moment to appreciate the contributions of Charles Darwin's "geologizing" to the birth of modern evolutionary biology. It is quite possible (and I think quite likely) that this is part of why he got it right where others did not. As Theodosius Dobzhansky said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". I'm not saying that evolution only occurs over geologicc timescales, or that that is the only place to study it, just that the power of evolutionary mechanisms at creating differentiation is best appreciated over such timescales. Luckily, in the geology department, Darwin really knew his schist.
On the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin described many organisms that were previously unknown to science, but he didn't stop with living fauna. On the coast of South America he described fossils of, among other critters, nine <largely> undescribed extinct species of megafauna. What's interesting is that these critters were things like ground sloths, giant armadillos, capybaras, and camelids. Sloths and armadillos are both unique groups with very unusual features, as to varying degrees are the other fossils he encountered. Most of these were also relatives of critters that Darwin had been eating a lot in his time in South America, so he had seen a lot of the bones of the modern forms. It was through comparison of the fossil and living organisms that Darwin realized how strong a force evolution was and how what might be advantageous in one time and place might not be in another.

Here are some pictures of the extinct critters and their extant relatives that helped Darwin piece together the processes of evolution.

Megatherium (Paris Natural History Museum): a giant ground sloth

Does actually look a bit like this guy on the inside!

Or there's Glyptodon, an ancient genus of giant armadillo!

And our more familiar looking friend the nine-banded armadillo

If you would like to know more about Darwin, his contributions to paleontology and geology, or the voyage of the Beagle, here are some great resources!
-This is a particularly nice National Geographic essay: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/02/darwin/quammen-text
-http://darwin-online.org.uk/
-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/darwin-geologist-first-and-last/
-https://bioteaching.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/charles-darwin/

Happy 207th Birthday, Charles!!!

Happy 207th Birthday, Charles!!!

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. paraphrased from Charles Darwin

Darwin's finches in danger ...