Evolving with Chuck 'n' Abe

Much as stars enthrall me, I don't expect them to "align" purposefully. So how shall we account for two of humanity's authentically great people -- Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- being born on this day 200 years ago? That's life!

Both men loosed furies. Both were greeted with reactionary howls akin to what we're hearing right now from shameless right wing extremists. Where the adult Darwin's quiet life of study appears downright reclusive, Lincoln's long strides out into the world were as bold as his vision of "our better angels." But they're not the "odd couple" one might think.

With eery parallels to evolution itself, Darwin's big idea -- "the Darwinian process" -- turned a kaleidoscopic collection of data readily at hand in Victorian England just enough so that the pieces fell into place differently. Lincoln did too. If one listens carefully to theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, this ceaseless and radically unpredictable unfolding is the very essence of life.

What Darwin showed us is that change ITSELF is a mechanism for development. That resoundingly challenges every conceivable status quo. So it's no wonder Edward J. Larson, who writes widely on evolution and the clash in America of science and religion, says it accounts for 15 decades of historical and cultural opposition to the overall idea of evolution. (Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, another anniversary this year.)

Oddly, those of us who like to think we're informed may well know even less now about evolution than Darwin's contemporaries did about what he was proposing. After all, Darwin was part of a great wave of enthusiasm across Britain and Europe for "natural history." Lots of people actually read his book in its entirety before agreeing with or attacking it.

And secondly, the modern "neo-Darwinian synthesis" -- which science has accepted since the 1950s -- is not your great-grandfather's Darwinism. It takes nothing away from Darwin's genius to say he cracked open the door and much has been learned since. In fact, Ed Larson says, if we go way back to Darwin, we don't understand the theory of evolution.

Remember, when Darwin demystified natural selection and the vital role environment places in that process, the concept of "genetics" did not yet exist. That revolution had to wait until the rediscovery of the work of Czech monk Gregor Mendel in the very late 1800s, and it was decades after that before mathematicians linked Darwin's original scientific work with Mendel's -- today's neo-Darwinian synthesis.

What was Abraham Lincoln doing in the tumult that was 1859? More profoundly defying the status quo than most of us can even imagine, and in no uncertain terms.

Lincoln Bi-Centennial co-chair Harold Holzer tells us that the Lincoln family has just released a letter Lincoln wrote to Senator Tom Corwin of Ohio the same year Darwin published Origin. Corwin had said to Lincoln, "All you do is talk about slavery, slavery and freedom. Why don't you talk about the tariff, why don't you talk about economics?" Mr. Holzer says Lincoln wrote back, using a word he used only this one time. "That is just stupid. Slaves is all that matters."

It is as brave and radical as it is prosaic to declare, as the late great Herman B Wells often reminded me, "The only constant is a change." It is also correct.

So here's my suggestions for a "birthday present" to Chuck 'n' Abe. Get -- and stay -- in the face of those who want to deny and pervert change. There's a world of possibility waiting to be born.

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You can access YouTube excerpts from many of our conversations our PaulaGordon.com website or go straight to YouTube.com/sunlightoxygen. Our Conversations with Ed Larson, Harold Holzer and Stuart Kauffman are available, in full, for your listening pleasure, on your own schedule -- yes, it's in MP3 and you can download it! -- at PaulaGordon.com where our archives include hundreds of "... Conversations with People at the Leading Edge"(sm).