Abstract
Charles Darwin’s name is going to be heard, read about, or spoken a lot this year, as it is the second centenary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. And as great as his contribution to science and the modern world is, we might ask ourselves whether we are making rather too much of this man. Is Darwin the important person he is being taken to be? To answer this question I shall raise three more: first, why do we celebrate individuals in scientific history, when it is the work of many scientists that gives us the results? Second, how original was Darwin anyway — who else did the important work? And third, what role do scientific heroes play in current science? Answers to these questions will give us a better, more sober and balanced, and more useful explanation of actual science both in the past and the present, and perhaps also in the future.
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John S Wilkins is a research fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the relation between evolution and religion, the philosophy of taxonomy, and the history of biology. He has also published in the area of cultural evolution, the philosophy of science, and on science communication through the new technologies. His blog, ‘Evolving Thoughts’, is a leading science and philosophy of biology blog.
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Wilkins, J.S. Not Saint Darwin. Reson 14, 154–171 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-009-0014-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-009-0014-8