The site is described in more detail in Der SpiegelThis site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; [Click to enlarge] also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.
But the collection also contains more personal correspondence, including a letter sent by Darwin after his daughter Annie died at age 10. Darwin's handwriting is not always easy to decypherThe publication is the largest ever of the famed scientist's personal papers, which for decades have been available only to scholars at Cambridge University. The archive contains nearly 90,000 images and 20,000 items, including sketches, field notes, manuscripts, drawings, letters and photographs. Among the highlights of the trove are Darwin's first draft of the theory of evolution, a pencil sketch of species theory, notes from the Beagle voyage, copious pages of jottings on sleep, expression, geology, plant reproduction, dust, and material for the first edition of his controversial treatise The Descent of Man, which attempts an evolutionary explanation of the human species.
On occasion, beneath Darwin's hard-to-decipher writing, his son Erasmus would help out, in notes like this: "He considers that the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God," he writes to a correspondent. "But ... different persons have different definitions of what they mean by God."
8 Comments
TomS · 18 April 2008
This is amazing in its comprehensiveness.
Not only the complete works of Darwin, but also translations (for my amusement, I just checked on the Georgian language, and there is indeed a Georgian translation listed) and relevant works by other writers (for example, Paley's "Natural Theology").
DavidK · 18 April 2008
A QUOTE-MINER'S DREAM!!! You watch.
David Stanton · 18 April 2008
Now, all they have to do is find the word HITLER in there somewhere, or at least a code that obviously spells out HITLER and case closed.
Maybe they can even find some DNA to prove that Darwin was Hitler's father. You know, kind of like a Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader kind of thing. No wait, that would mean that Hitler had to be Darwin's father. Yea, I'm sure they could prove that. Unless of course DNA is just an evil conspiracy as well.
John Mark Ockerbloom · 18 April 2008
Found it! In the edited edition of Darwin's entomological notes at
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F1830&pageseq=1
we can find several references to "Hister" and "Histeridae".
And as any devotee of Nostradamus can tell you (see, e.g., http://www.qsl.net/w5www/nostradamus.html ), "Hister" is well known to be an occult synonym for "Hitler".
The smoking gun has been found! Someone alert the Expelled folks...
PvM · 19 April 2008
ellazimm · 19 April 2008
I live in England and I was pleased yesterday to notice again that Darwin is on the back of our £10 notes.
We don't have separation of church and state but we respect Dawkins and Darwin as great scientists and people to be proud of. Yeah.
Befuddled Theorist · 27 April 2008
PvM,
Thanks for putting this here for us to read. I looked at Darwin's 1st ed of Origin of Species and was amazed at the thought and detail of his argumentation. He must have been an intelligent and bold person to write this type of thinking down when religions were so literal and powerful.
An added bonus is to be able to see photographs of the original pages, they really made a big impact just to see.
Response to ellazimm's post: I like the idea of putting noteable people like Darwin on currency, although I'm not sure what that might do with the Separation Of Church And State issue. Fundies try to make Evolution / Darwinism into a religion so that they might argue it's unacceptability to be taught in schools, but not reputable scientists.
Dave Luckett · 16 February 2009
That last comment is the slimiest piece of bot-spawned blog comment spam I've ever seen.