You already know that Charles Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 — that’s 204 years ago today. Our question for today is whether you agree with this article we found in London’s Daily Telegraph: Charles Darwin: the man who had history’s best idea.
We understand that a British newspaper would be proud of Darwin’s accomplishments, but is the theory of evolution really “history’s best idea”? Is that how you see it? The Telegraph‘s first few paragraphs expand on the question that came to mind when we saw their headline. We added the bold font for emphasis:
It’s Charles Darwin’s birthday today – the great man is 204 years young – and I thought we ought to mark it in some way, because, I think, he has a very good shout for being history’s most important thinker, or at least for having had history’s single greatest idea.
You may disagree: you may think, for instance, that Newton or Copernicus or Galileo should have that accolade, for their wonderful insights into the movements of the heavens and Earth’s place in the cosmos. Or Einstein, for relativity, which was really the first time that a scientific theory showed that the universe and our perception of the universe are two extremely different things. Kant and Bentham might be worthy recipients. The Reverend Thomas Bayes or Father Georges Lemaitre would deserve honourable mentions.
The author, Tom Chivers, goes on at length about why he thinks evolution was more important than everything else. Maybe he’s right, but we’re not sure. As much as we appreciate Darwin’s work, is evolution really the greatest idea in history?
In addition to the contenders mentioned by Chivers, there have been other ideas that also played an enormous part in the development of our civilization. What about Aristotelian logic? Athenian democracy? Euclidean geometry? Let’s not overlook Eratosthenes, who, around 200 BC, was the first to calculate the circumference of the Earth.
How about Ben Franklin and electricity? (We know Franklin isn’t solely responsible for our modern electrical age, but we like Ben so we’re using him as an exemplar to represent all the others.) Didn’t electricity make a bigger contribution to the modern world than evolution? It’s a stretch, but we can imagine a star-traveling alien species who never conceived of evolution; but they would have know about electricity.
Perhaps the greatest idea of all was the development of the scientific method, which liberated us from the shackles of supernaturalism. Its completion was one of the crown jewels of the Enlightenment, which is utterly despised by contemporary creationists.
Some of the things we mentioned were the work of one man, and some, like the scientific method, were the cumulative effort of several. We’re not necessarily looking for the individual with the greatest idea, but the idea itself. So what was history’s greatest idea? That’s our question. dear reader, and we’d appreciate your input.
Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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I like to have it both ways … I was thinking Galileo because he was THE trailblazer for the acceptance of science.
The method makes it possible to know with certainty, the single most important thing there is.
I think Darwin’s idea is the greatest idea ever ellucidated (and I am a physical scientist) because of the difficult in seeing the pattern amongst all of the froufroual. And because of its applicabilty to so many systems.
The scientific method is not an idea–it is a formalized justification for an approach to problems by thinking. The earliest scientists were following their curiosity and just asking “Why?” a lot. The scientific method is not a formal method that can be practically applied, it is just something to teach school kids (and Republicans of the same educational attainment (Sorry Curmudg!).
Scientific method — hands down. All the other ideas mentioned derive from it, including evolution.
“History’ Best Idea, Charles Darwin”
I’m going with sci guy, makes sense.
I have a question for any creationists who visit SC’s site as to the best idea ever.
How does a thermos bottle know to keep hot things hot
and cold things cold?.
This is a tough one for a creationist I know, but, do your best.
We atheist scientist conspirators are always thinging up devious stuff like that.
To be a great idea it has to have impact and also has to be something that doesn’t occur to anyone else. Evolution of course has a codiscoverer Alfred Wallace. In science this often happens, but I think that alone means it isn’t the greatest idea. Strike two is that I’m not in awe of the evolutionary theory the way I am with thermodynamics or quantum mechanics. It just doesn’t seem to be as impressive. Evolution is probably not even in the top 10.
We may never know who where the first to drag fingers through the dirt in hopes of abstracting an idea in the attempt to communicate, but we owe them all that we are.
We don’t see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants, we have their ideas and findings recorded and benefit from combining them with our own. Hopefully we record ours in as diligent a manner as possible to carry forward the legacy we have been given.
Our ability to abstract ideas into symbolic and verbal terms constitutes the very matter that composes our intellectual universe.
Symbolic communication allows ideas and information to travel in time and dreams to become reality.
My vote goes to communication, information is of little use without it.
I think the Theory of Evolution should be number one, because it addresses how we humans came to be. This is a universal question, given some answer in every culture. That Darwin and Wallace independently arrived at the same mechanism supports, in my mind, the thought that they were onto something with a high degree of verisimilitude.
Dean: “We may never know who where the first to drag fingers through the dirt in hopes of abstracting an idea in the attempt to communicate, but we owe them all that we are.”
That put a smile on my face! Excellent sentiment.
I’d personally give it to Yāska, the Vedic grammarian and author of the Nirukta….. but there is no understating the paradigmatic shift Mr Darwin unleashed.
I think ToE certainly ranks up there as history’s greatest idea.
There have been few other ideas that have created such a huge social, or scientific shift in our way of thinking.
As much as relativity and thermo dynamics have expanded scientific knowledge and technology it has not sparked the same level of debate and social change that evolution has. Few organizations outside the scientific community would have been excited by a change to thermodynamics. I doubt there was a huge social outcry/discussion over electricity.
However, Evolution has sparked wildfire across the globe even 200 years after it was published, his theory affected theories and ideas in almost every scientific field. It changed or at least unified our understanding on the age of our planet, stripped away the logic of racism, and answers basic human questions of where we came from. Something few other theories could do.
And to top things off Darwin knew nothing about genetics, and transitional fossils also hadn’t been discovered when he published. Yet he was able to provide enough proof and evidence to sway people and make predictions that are coming true 200 years later.
I think Darwin’s “Origins of Species” is the most importat single book – or single communication act, in Dean’s words – in mankind’s history, both for the idea himself and for the immediate impact on science, philosophy, religion and ethic all at the same time.
It is not so much ToE itself that was so mind-bending, but rather the corollary of selection. With natural selection, ‘design’ and human ‘essence’ itself became likely to be material, without teleological content or undertones. The H-bomb was small by comparison. After Darwin all elves, big and little, went poof.
Evolution is undoubtedly the most profound idea ever. It provides a simple yet powerful mechanism to explain where all life forms including us came from. It has shown that we humans are essentially animals with a bit more intelligence than the rest, using which we seek our own origins.
I third RSG’s opinion. The scientific method, mainly the concept that we could figure things out without having to invoke a supernatural entity, was (and is) the basis for all science, biological or not.
The article should have said “The theory of evolution by natural selection.” With that clarification, I agree that it’s the best idea. It’s not often that a single concept elucidates so much of our world.
Wow! What a great string!
Stephen Pruis and I were writing simultaneously, so I didn’t see his comment before writing. If we were to agree with his assessment that the scientific method isn’t an idea per se, but rather a problem-solving tool, then the same restriction would apply to Dean’s nomination of communication (which I agree with, by the way). However, communication is not an exclusively human “idea”. Dolphins, whales, chimps, birds, and even plants(!) communicate.
So, if we don’t count the scientific method as an “idea”, I would nominate Einstein’s theory of relativity as the single most insightful idea that any one person has elucidated. He was so far ahead of his time, and the implications are so far-reaching, that even today we ask ourselves, “How did he ever come up with that?!?” If Einstein had not been born, we probably would still be without the concept. I don’t think we can say that about Darwin and the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was smart, but he was no Einstein.
Best idea: Agriculture, because it has allowed humans to live better, help others often, and wonder more about their own world and the universe.
Worst idea: Agriculture, because it has allowed theologians to overpopulate the Earth “to the Glory of God” and quickly destroy every natural resource that would have provided for human evolution to continue for additional thousands of generations into the future.
Darwin, Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, Einstein? English, Italian, Latin, Latin, German. Popular book, popular book, extremely academic book for mathematicians, extremely academic book for mathematicians, extremely academic paper in an obscure journal that solved a problem few would even know existed (and probably still don’t).
All had to fight against the academic status-quo of their time; only, of course, becoming the academic status-quo of the future.
Galileo is only famous because of his spat with the Vatican and also for inventing the pendulum. Copernicus is only famous because his name became synonymous with the heliocentric system. You haven’t mentioned Kepler, who was the one that actually got it right. Galileo was a great scientist but his contribution was not to the heliocentric theory except that he provided independent evidence that Kepler was not wrong about it and his work on mechanics provided the basis for Newtonian mechanics. Galileo, however, was still stuck with Aristotelian circles.
Newton his famous for his apple and the discovery of gravity (?). Einstein is famous for his haircut. You haven’t mentioned Maxwell, without whom Einstein would not have had a conflict with Newtonian physics to resolve.
I suspect that few know what Galileo, Newton, Copernicus, and Einstein actually did.
In the popular imagination, Darwin stands out from all these others. He published a book that was a scandal that today’s gutter-press can only dream of. It was a subject that anyone could appreciate. It was written in plain English. Readers did not have to have a background in the subject to understand it. It was a sell-out. It is still being read.