Darwin-- the name, the beard, the Beagle. They're catchy. He makes a great figurehead. Look at that furrowed brow. He oozes authority and learned wisdom. He looks like a cross between Moses and Socrates.
The point is well-made though:
"Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution."
Mendel alone is well worth more attention. MIT has an amazing biology lecture on Mendel that captures the eccentricities of scientific discovery. And his story is just as captivating as Darwin's, even if it doesn't include seafaring:
"Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, discovered that in pea plants inheritance of individual traits followed patterns. Superiors burned his papers posthumously in 1884."
We also have to remember how far the theory of evolution has come since Darwin's time:
"Darwin was an adult before scientists began debating whether germs caused disease and whether physicians should clean their instruments....In 1860 Louis Pasteur performed experiments that eventually disproved “spontaneous generation,” the idea that life continually arose from nonliving things."
By anchoring evolution to Darwin we hold onto an 'ism' that is too easily dismissed as ideology rather than science:
"We don’t call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism.... “Darwinism” implies that biological scientists “believe in” Darwin’s “theory.”"
So maybe we should drop Darwin Day? It's Lincoln's birthday on Thursday anyway, so we can always switch from one venerable beard to another.
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