David Siegel - The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty

No matter what side of the evolution debate you fall on, Charles Darwin is the exemplar of disinterested scientific inquiry. Darwin also successfully maintains an unparalleled passion for the study of nature which reveals itself in the comprehensive corpus of empirical data presented to the us, not for the sake of argument, but rather for our consideration. This offering of the fruits of his research is humble and inviting – as if Darwin considers us colleagues.

Without so much fanfare, I am saying that I found On the Origin of Species to be extremely straightforward and intellectually honest. Darwin is the consummate evidentialist; he rarely, if ever, makes a claim on insufficient evidence. He does not hesitate to admit that it may be reasonable to believe in a Creator, or that it is difficult for him to see how some biotic feature or another could have come about through successive transitional gradations. Nevertheless, he is judicious with making conclusions to the point where he will study pigeon toe-feathers for years before committing himself to a belief about pigeon genealogy.

Additionally, Darwin is such a successful scientist and thinker because of his scientifically informed yet seemingly unconstrained imagination. One of my favorite hypotheses demonstrating this was Darwin’s suggestion that if icebergs can transport boulders across the sea then they can transport foxes to islands. What a great idea!