Darwin Day 2025 is on Wednesday, February 12, 2025: Topic ideas for a Darwin Day essay contest?

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 is Darwin Day 2025.

Sponsored Deals

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Darwin Day remembers the anniversary from the birth from the famous transformative researcher Charles Darwin.

Hello, The Effects of Aristotelian Teleological Thought on Darwin's Mechanistic Views of

Evolution

Jordan Hoffman

The need to understand organisms has been a much sought goal of

science since its birth as biology. History shows Aristotle and Charles Darwin

as two of the most powerful biologists of all time. Aristotle's teleological

method was supported widely for over 2,000 years. One scientist remarks that

the Aristotelian teleology "has been the ghost, the unexplained mystery which

has haunted biology through its whole history" (Ayala, 10). If Aristotle's

approach has frightened biology, then Darwin, who actually nicknamed himself

the "Devils Chaplain," and his idea of natural selection has virtually dissected

Aristotle's ghost. While Aristotle explained biology through a plan and a

purpose, Darwin debated that randomness and chaos are responsible for the

organic world as we know it. Giuseppe Montalenti, an Italian geneticist and philosopher of biology, wrote that Darwin's ideas were a rebellion against

thought in the Aristotelian-scholastic way (Ayala, 4). In order to

understand how Darwinism can be considered a revolt against Aristotle, we must

first inspect Aristotle's ideas and thoughts about biology. Read the complete essay here:

How's your Darwin Day going?

Wow, did this draw poison from a nasty wound!

Anyway, happy Darwin Day yourself.

I know you didn't claim he was an atheist, which some of these seem to think. Darwin was pretty much agnostic - he couldn't countenance a benign god looking over us, certainly not after his beloved daughter died at the age of 8. He may not have set out to disprove the existence of God, but then Alexander Fleming didn't set out to kill bacteria when he let mould form in his petri dishes. Good science isn't goal-oriented.

Did you watch the Darwin Day Debate?

I wish to express my gratitude for the educational content of the program. We can see that a lot of people are really insecure about their destination in life and their believed sense of a creator. There may be a few whom will disagree with my comments but I'm always open-minded in these subjects. There was a section of which I believe was left left out purposefully to sell the program, and that is when Darwin and Herbert Armstrong discussed the existence of a creator and Darwin's acceptance, however Darwin had a lifetime of research and couldn't "just throw this away to show he conceded. They both parted and still remained Friends, Armstrong's answer to Darwin was; "study the eye-ball." Armstrong died in the early 1990's