Charles Darwin achieved the most important breakthrough in the annals of scientific thinking with the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. But Darwin did not see himself as a great intellect or even a particularly clever person. His self-awareness was not the product of humility, as Shane Parrish points out in a short • Read More »
Darwin’s basic marketing plan, according to Johnson, was to let others promote the book while never appearing to do so himself. He planned to be drafted into immortality. And so he was.
Tags: Alfred Russel Wallace, Asa Gray, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Origin of Species, Paul Johnson
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (4,171) on Friday, April 6, 2018. Planting the garden was the first order of business on the farm this week. After I had completed the tilling last week, we had some more rain, so the planting did not begin on Good Friday, as is our • Read More »
Tags: Charles Darwin, Facebook, Major League Baseball, Origin of Species, Paul Johnson
Two of them slowed his writing down. He feared that his work would be dismissed by the fellow scientists for whom it was written. That would have been a humiliation that he did not believe he could stand.
He also feared what his wife, a deeply religious woman, would think.
The final fear had the opposite effect from the first two. It drove him to finish and finish quickly.
Tags: Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, Paul Johnson
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (4,116), on Friday, March 9, 2018. Hi, You may think that I am obsessed with William Shakespeare, that I just can’t leave him alone. Actually, it’s the other way around. He won’t leave me alone. The last three newsletters have had items about The Bard, • Read More »
Tags: Charles Darwin, Daniel Ellsberg, dictionaries, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, George Frederick Handel, Girl With the Pearl Earring, Hallelujah Chorus, Hot Stove League, Johannes Vermeer, John Casson, Messiah, Pentagon Papers, radio, Rick Goldsmith, Robert McNamara, Seventh Inning Stretch, The Guardian, watercp;pr, William Shakespeare