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Week 2

Cremisi's picture

 This week has been an interesting one for me as I go deeper into the thoughts of evolution. In particular, this week has been a marvel for me--to see how things evolve..to look at things in terms of a story. Whenever I thought about Darwin I used to think of a stuffy old man eating pheasant at expensive dinner parties. I had never really known the tentative, worrisome, and somewhat charming character that Darwin graces the pages with. I had always thought of science evolving over inspiration, happiness, and wonder..but while reading this book, I find that science is the product of worry. Darwin had his own observations, and they didn't quite match up with what modern science was currently saying. Darwin doesn't then go on a tirade against all modern theories, but rather, he keeps a cool, perhaps even a bit self-deprecating and humble line of conversation and reflection, observations and discussions pulsing through the story. I'm becoming rather fond of Darwin as a character. I even often imagine him, with his polished British accent, sitting across the room and telling me the story of The Origin of Species. I imagine his hand gestures, his pauses, him shifting in his chair right before he is to unveil a large discovery he had made. I would never have thought about it before, but this book, is becoming not like a science report, but an actual book. Non fiction is a story..and I suppose that everything on earth is a story. Everything is constantly becoming the past, and everything--science, literature, theories, they are all memories neatly packaged and filed away into our minds.

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