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The Rat
SFN Regular
Canada
1370 Posts |
 Posted - 11/16/2001 : 09:34:21
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I'm so delighted with a recent find that I wanted to share it. Stuck on a bookshelf at my in-law's house was an old ‘LIFE' book in their Nature Library series. Published in 1962, it was written by a woman named Ruth Moore. Her bio in the book says she is/was a journalist who covered the Washington economic scene for the Chicago Sun-Times. After a chance meeting with a University of Chicago professor she took an interest in evolution and became a science writer. And what a writer! Listen to this passage from the book, and keep in mind that this was written almost forty years ago. She is writing about Charles Darwin;
For the present he was fully occupied with observing, collecting, comparing and wondering, and full of “a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science” But his destiny was not humble but herculean; to jack up the whole noble structure and put a new foundation under it.
That foundation is evolution, the concept that there is a kinship among all forms of life because all evolved in an amplitude of time from one common ancestry, and that there are differences between them because they have diverged from that ancestry in taking over the earth, its air and its waters. Darwin did not invent the concept. But when he started his career, the doctrine of special creation could be doubted only by heretics. When he finished, the fact of evolution could be denied only by an abandonment of reason. He demolished the old theory with two books. One, published in 1859, he titled
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
by means of Natural Selection,
or the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life.
The second, published in 1871, he called
THE DESCENT OF MAN
and Selection in Relation to sex.
These books did not so much undermine the old, comfortable order of things as simply overwhelm it; nobody had ever bothered to try documenting the other side - instantaneous creation - with such a painstakingly built structure of evidence. At two strokes Darwin gave modern science a rationale, a philosophy, an evolutionary, and thereby a revolutionary, way of thinking about the universe and everything in it, and incidentally established himself as the Newton of biology. But at the same time he dealt mankind's preening self-esteem a body blow from which it may never recover, and for which Darwin may never be quite forgiven. For it is one thing for man to be told (and want to believe) that he was created in the literal image of God. It is quite another thing for him to be told (and have to accept) that he is, while unique, merely the culmination of a billion years of ever-evolving life, and that he must trace his godhood down a gnarled and twisted family tree through mammals and amphibians to the lowly fish and thence to some anonymous, if miraculous, Adam molecule.
I like her style! Anybody know if she's still around?
Free speech; excercise it or SHUT UP!
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Lisa
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2001 : 19:23:51 [Permalink]
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I too, love a well-turned phrase. Sometimes, while reading a book, even though I'm enjoying the story, I'm jealous of the author. I love it when a single sentence can make me understand a concept, make me laugh, or reduce me to tears.
Since I've been hitting the boards, my writing has gotten better. I'll never be a Slater, that's for sure. I've asked Trish to write stuff for me, especially if it was going to my congressman. Ljbrs is in a class by herself.
Side note: I got an e-mail from Ed's lieutenant when he was about to retire. She wanted to know if I'd like to write something to be read at the ceremony. So I did. Ed said there wasn't a dry eye in the house. I didn't think it was all that great, and probably would have been better if I'd bothered Trish to do it for me. Still, practice might not make perfect, but it makes it better.
Lisa
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room. |
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Trish
SFN Addict
USA
2102 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2001 : 01:26:33 [Permalink]
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Thanks Lisa for the vote of confidence in my writing style.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. -Mark Twain |
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NubiWan
Skeptic Friend
USA
424 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2001 : 10:13:54 [Permalink]
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Would have no way to know me own self, of course, but suspect, that when a 'writer' hits their stride, they, personally, are probably unaware of it, they are "just writting." So true enough, Lisa, but you could become one hell of a Lisa.
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." -Voltaire |
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