Ruse, Michael. "Philosophers Rip Darwin." CHRONICLE REVIEW March 7, 2010.

Fodor, Jerry A., and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. What Darwin Got Wrong. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009.

Last year was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The anniversary was marked by conferences the world over. I will not tell you how many I attended; ecologically sensitive readers of The Chronicle might start whining about carbon footprints and that sort of thing. Let me just say that I found myself going no fewer than three times through the Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Ill. Moline! I mention this as background to the publication of a new book by Jerry A. Fodor, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University, and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, a professor of cognitive science at the University of Arizona. The title of the book, What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), tells you their opinion of the old English naturalist and of his theory of evolution through natural selection. If Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini were an isolated case, one could dismiss their book with a grimace (if you were a biologist), or welcome them with a cheer (if you were a creationist). But in the philosophical community, there is an increasingly vocal cadre of eminent philosophers harboring doubts about Darwin. To understand their critique, we must first put the clock back a year, to the beginning of the celebrations. . . .

Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/article/What-Darwins-Doubters-Get/64457/.

Shapin, Steven. "The Darwin Show." LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS 32.1 (2010).

It has been history’s biggest birthday party. On or around 12 February 2009 alone – the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, ‘Darwin Day’ – there were more than 750 commemorative events in at least 45 countries, and, on or around 24 November, there was another spate of celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In Mysore, Darwin Day was observed by an exhibition ‘proclaiming the importance of the day and the greatness of the scientist’. In Charlotte, North Carolina, there were performances of a one-man musical, Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert (‘Twas adaptive radiation that produced the mighty whale;/His hands have grown to flippers/And he has a fishy tail’). At Harvard, the celebrations included ‘free drinks, science-themed rock bands, cake, decor and a dancing gorilla’ (stuffed with a relay of biology students). Circulating around the university, student and faculty volunteers declaimed the entire text of the Origin.

On the Galapagos Islands, tourists making scientific haj were treated to ‘an active, life-seeing account of the life of this magnificent scientist’, and a party of Stanford alumni retraced the circumnavigating voyage of HMS Beagle in a well-appointed private Boeing 757, intellectually chaperoned by Darwin’s most distinguished academic biographer. The Darwin anniversaries were celebrated round the world: in Bogotá, Mexico City, Montevideo, Toronto, Toulouse, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Bangalore, Singapore, Seoul, Osaka, Cape Town, Rome (where it was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Culture, part of a Vatican hatchet-burying initiative), and in all the metropolitan and scientific settings you might expect. The English £10 note has borne Darwin’s picture on the back since 2000 (replacing Dickens), but special postage stamps and a new £2 coin honoured him in 2009, as did stamps or coins in at least ten other countries.

Darwin had an anniversary Facebook group dedicated to him: its goal was to have 200,000 unique Happy Birthdays posted by 12 February and a million ‘friends’ by the November anniversary of the Origin. The group also planned a mass ‘Happy Birthday, Darwin’ sing-along, but I don’t think this actually happened. Then there were the Darwin-themed T-shirts, teddy bears, bobbleheads, tote bags, coffee mugs, fridge magnets, mouse mats, scatter cushions and pet bowls; the ‘Darwin Loves You’ bumper-stickers, the ‘Darwin Is My Homeboy’ badges, and the ‘I ♥ Darwinism’ thongs. The opening line of the year’s most substantial historical contribution, Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s Darwin’s Sacred Cause, is: ‘Global brands don’t come much bigger than Charles Darwin.’ Quite right. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n01/steven-shapin/the-darwin-show.

Browne, Janet. "Darwin the Young Adventurer." HUMANITIES (May/June 2009).

Charles Darwin was only twenty-two years old when he was offered the opportunity of a lifetime. Those years afloat have become part of history. Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle is famous for turning his mind toward evolutionary theory, for giving him the intellectual stamina and materials to support such a theory, and for the romantic symbolism of his movement toward such an unexpected yet magnificent goal. Darwin himself certainly appreciated the impact of the voyage. For him, the Beagle voyage opened the door to exceptional sights and opportunities—the impressive landscapes of South America, the fecundity of the tropics, dramatic encounters with other cultures and ways of life, hazardous travels off the beaten track, exotic islands, and countless moments when his imagination was powerfully stirred. On his return, his Beagle successes enabled him to join the world of natural history experts, and inspired the evolutionary views that he expressed in 1859 in On the Origin of Species. “The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career,” he declared in his autobiography. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2009-05/Darwin.html.

Cfp: "Darwin's Impact on Science, Society and Culture: a 21st Century Reassessment," Catholic University of Portugal, September 10-12, 2009.

The Centre of Philosophical and Humanistic Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy is organizing an International Congress to celebrate two remarkable anniversaries: the birth of Charles Darwin and the publication of his major work, Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Needless to say, the world changed dramatically after Darwin, and we are still coming to terms with the Darwinian revolution, as well as its impact on virtually every domain of human culture. We will reassess this impact especially on science (Biology, Genetics, Artificial Life, Psychology and Linguistics), philosophy (Anthropology, Ethics, Epistemology, Aesthetics), and religion (Christianity, Islam, Budhism, Hinduism and other religious faiths). The reception of Darwinism in the different countries and cultures will also be a major issue that is to be addressed in the Congress. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.congressos.facfil.eu/congress/c/26/darwins-impact-on-science-society-and-culture.

Cfp: "Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God," University of Notre Dame, November 1-3, 2009.

Sponsored by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. This international conference is devoted to evolutionary theory in its scientific, anthropological, philosophical, and theological dimensions as a contribution to the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Download conference postcard (PDF). Featured Speakers: Gennaro Auletta, Gregorian University, Rome Francisco Ayala, University of California, Irvine William Carroll, Blackfriars, Oxford University Celia Deane-Drummond, University of Chester Jean Gayon, University of Paris Paul Griffiths, University of Sydney Kenneth Miller, Brown University Alessandro Minelli, University of Padua Sandra Mitchell, University of Pittsburgh Simon Conway Morris, Cambridge University Robert Richards, University of Chicago Bernard Wood, George Washington University Archbishop Jozef Zycinski, University of Lublin, Poland Conference Goals: examine the present state of theoretical discussion of evolutionary theory within the biological sciences reflect on the future directions of evolutionary theory through interdisciplinary discussions by scientists, social scientists, philosophers of science, and theologians explore issues at the intersection of evolutionary theory for our understanding of human nature develop interdisciplinary dialogue involving theology, philosophy, and evolutionary biology to form new perspectives on evolutionary science, Christian humanism, and the theology of creation Call for Papers 20 minute contributed papers on topics of relevance to the conference themes will be accepted for simultaneous sessions on November 2 and 3. Abstracts of 200 words and brief C.V.s are due by June 12, with notification of acceptance by June 19. Abstracts and proposals should be emailed to nd.reilly.31@nd.edu. Visit the conference webpage here: http://nd.edu/~reilly/darwinconference.html.

Shermer, Michael. "A Skeptic's Take on the Public Misunderstanding of Darwin." SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (February 2009).

On July 2, 1866, Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, wrote to Charles Darwin to lament how he had been “so repeatedly struck by the utter inability of numbers of intelligent persons to see clearly or at all, the self acting & necessary effects of Nat Selection, that I am led to conclude that the term itself & your mode of illustrating it, however clear & beautiful to many of us are yet not the best adapted to impress it on the general naturalist public.” The source of the misunderstanding, Wallace continued, was the name itself, in that it implies “the constant watching of an intelligent ‘chooser’ like man’s selection to which you so often compare it,” and that “thought and direction are essential to the action of ‘Natural Selection.’” Wallace suggested redacting the term and adopting Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest.” Unfortunately, that is what happened, and it led to two myths about evolution that persist today: that there is a prescient directionality to evolution and that survival depends entirely on cutthroat competitive fitness. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=darwin-misunderstood.

Hodge, Jonathan. Review of Michael Ruse, et al., eds. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. NDPR (May 2009).

Ruse, Michael, and Robert J. Richards, eds. Cambridge Companion to The Origin of Species. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. It will be as well to begin with a clarification and a declaration of interest. As readers of NDPR will know, Cambridge University Press has for some years now been publishing a series of volumes on the philosophers: their Cambridge Companion series. A few of these volumes have been devoted to scientists. There is one on Darwin, now out in a second edition. It is edited by Gregory Radick and myself. The same press has also been publishing a series of Companion volumes on particular books. The volume under review here is devoted to Darwin's Origin of Species, first published in 1859. There is only a little overlap between the two Companion volumes. Each has a chapter by John Brooke discussing Darwin's religious views, but the emphasis is different enough that interested readers will want to consult both. Again, Darwin's analogy between natural and artificial selection is discussed in both volumes and also naturally enough his theory of natural selection. There is no chapter in the Origin volume on the structure of the whole argument of that book. However there is a chapter -- by the philosopher of biology, Kenneth Waters -- on just that in the Darwin Companion. As for philosophy: the Origin volume has only one chapter (by Tim Lewens) by a philosopher writing with philosophers in mind. The Darwin Companion has half a dozen. The contents of this Origin volume are diverse. The editors' introduction usefully gives synopses of all the chapters. After the short first chapter, by Michael Ruse, on how and why Darwin came to write the Origin as he did, the remaining chapters fall into four groups. The first group is devoted to the topics Darwin himself takes up in his book, in the order he adopted. So we have a chapter each on: the selection analogy, variation and inheritance, natural selection, species, the principle of divergence, the objections Darwin anticipated and countered, geology, biogeography, classification, and embryology and morphology. Then there is a second group, of three chapters: on Darwin's botany, on his rhetoric, and on his religion. Next come three chapters on the legacies: for literature; for political thought, and for philosophy. Finally, there is a chapter on the Origin as a book rather than a text: its production, publication, sales and so on. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15965.

Boyd, Brian. "Purpose-Driven Life." THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Spring 2009).

Evolutionary thinking has lately expanded from the biological to the human world, first into the social sciences and recently into the humanities and the arts. Many people therefore now understand the human, and even human culture, as inextricably biological. But many others in the humanities—in this, at least, like religious believers who reject evolution outright—feel that a Darwinian view of life and a biological view of humanity can only deny human purpose and meaning. Does evolution by natural selection rob life of purpose, as so many have feared? The answer is no. On the contrary, Charles Darwin has made it possible to understand how purpose, like life, builds from small beginnings, from the ground up. In a very real sense, evolution creates purpose. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/purpose-driven-life/.

Safina, Carl. "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live." NEW YORK TIMES February 9, 2009.

Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution. Such as: Gregor Mendel’s patterns of heredity (which gave Darwin’s idea of natural selection a mechanism — genetics — by which it could work); the discovery of DNA (which gave genetics a mechanism and lets us see evolutionary lineages); developmental biology (which gives DNA a mechanism); studies documenting evolution in nature (which converted the hypothetical to observable fact); evolution’s role in medicine and disease (bringing immediate relevance to the topic); and more. By propounding “Darwinism,” even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one “theory.” The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi said, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” The point is that making a master teacher into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching. So let us now kill Darwin. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10essa.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.

Dawkins, Richard. "Dawkins on Darwin." TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT February 11, 2009.

How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world. Given the title of Jerry Coyne’s book, this is a distraction that I must deal with. A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true. But now a certain kind of anthropologist can be relied on to jump up and say something like the following: Who are you to elevate scientific “truth” so? The tribal beliefs are true in the sense that they hang together in a meshwork of consistency with the rest of the tribe’s world view. Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”. Listen, anthropologist. Just as you entrust your travel to a Boeing 747 rather than a magic carpet or a broomstick; just as you take your tumour to the best surgeon available, rather than a shaman or a mundu mugu, so you will find that the scientific version of truth works. You can use it to navigate through the real world. . . . Read the rest here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5707143.ece.

Wade, Nicholas. "Darwin, Ahead of his Time, is Still Influential." NEW YORK TIMES February 9, 2009.

Darwin’s theory of evolution has become the bedrock of modern biology. But for most of the theory’s existence since 1859, even biologists have ignored or vigorously opposed it, in whole or in part. Perhaps as famous as any of Darwin’s books is The Voyage of the Beagle, his account of his nearly five-year voyage of exploration, which took him around Cape Horn to the Galápagos Islands. It was on that trip that he made observations, like those of the many varieties of island finches, that provided raw material for his thinking about the process of evolution. It is a testament to Darwin’s extraordinary insight that it took almost a century for biologists to understand the essential correctness of his views. Biologists quickly accepted the idea of evolution, but for decades they rejected natural selection, the mechanism Darwin proposed for the evolutionary process. Until the mid-20th century they largely ignored sexual selection, a special aspect of natural selection that Darwin proposed to account for male ornaments like the peacock’s tail. And biologists are still arguing about group-level selection, the idea that natural selection can operate at the level of groups as well as on individuals. Darwin proposed group selection — or something like it; scholars differ as to what he meant — to account for castes in ant societies and morality in people. How did Darwin come to be so in advance of his time? Why were biologists so slow to understand that Darwin had provided the correct answer on so many central issues? Historians of science have noted several distinctive features of Darwin’s approach to science that, besides genius, help account for his insights. They also point to several nonscientific criteria that stood as mental blocks in the way of biologists’ accepting Darwin’s ideas. One of Darwin’s advantages was that he did not have to write grant proposals or publish 15 articles a year. He thought deeply about every detail of his theory for more than 20 years before publishing On the Origin of Species in 1859, and for 12 years more before its sequel, The Descent of Man, which explored how his theory applied to people. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10evolution.html?_r=2&em=&pagewanted=all.

Cfp: "Charles Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES after 150 Years," Virginia Tech University, November 4, 2009.

There will be three concurrent sections of papers organized around:

• Issues about the interpretation and reception of the Origin;
• Issues about the social and political influence of the Origin and its relevance to the current century; and,
• Continuing scientific debates related to issues raised or addressed in the Origin.

Six papers will be accepted for each of the concurrent sessions, with speaking time limited to one-half hour. The conference is strongly interdisciplinary: we encourage submission of papers that will be intelligible to a general university audience. Submissions by individuals from diverse backgrounds, including groups underrepresented in the sciences, are particularly encouraged. We anticipate arranging for publication of some or all of the papers derived from the conference presentations.

Please submit your abstract, with a maximum length of 500 words. Your abstract must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 15. The submissions will be refereed and notification of the panel's decision will be sent by Friday, June 19.

Further information may be found here: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/darwin.

Cfp: International Darwin Conference, University of Bradford, September 24-26, 2009.

The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers in the natural science, the social sciences and the humanities and to provide a forum for the investigation of different aspects of Darwin's thought. The occasion for this conference is the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species on November 24, 1859 and the bicentenary of his birth (February 12, 1809). The Organizers are particularly interested in contributions to the following aspects: Darwinism in Approaches to the Mind; Darwinism in the Social Sciences; Darwinism in the Life Sciences; Reception of Darwinism. The conference webpage is here: http://www.brad.ac.uk/ihs/Darwin2009/.

Cfp: "THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES at 150: a Celebratory Conference," University of Toronto, November 21-24, 2009.

Sponsored by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Philosophy. Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “In July [1837] I opened my first notebook for facts in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected, and never ceased working for the next twenty years.” In 1842, he wrote a “very brief abstract” of his theory (35 pages), which in the summer of 1844 he expanded to 230 pages. Beginning in September 1858, after receiving an essay from Alfred Russell Wallace, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” which outlined the central mechanism of evolution on which Darwin had been working, he began work on completing the manuscript of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray, the publisher, launched the book on November 24, 1859 by releasing 1,250 copies. The impact of The Origin of Species has equalled the impact of Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It is the unifying theoretical framework for all modern biology. November 24, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Philosophy at University of Toronto are mounting a Gala Celebratory Conference. The conference will culminate in a gala dinner on November 24 at which participants will toast the tremendous achievement of Charles Robert Darwin. Five multi-disciplinary symposia have been organized. For each symposium, the panel consists of a biologist, a historian of biology and a philosopher of biology. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.hps.utoronto.ca/darwin/.

Jeffery, Andrew V. "Review of George Levine's DARWIN LOVES YOU." MOR August 19, 2008.

Levine, George. Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. One of the great challenges confronting the modern philosopher is the preservation of meaning and value in the "disenchanted" world described by science: a world apparently bereft of teleology and supernatural transcendence. Probably no scientist's re-description of the world is more frequently cited as a source of this disenchantment than that of Charles Darwin. It is Weber's version of this "disenchantment narrative" that George Levine has taken as his foil in Darwin Loves You, and it is Darwin that Levine seeks to vindicate. Levine's principle theme is that one can find in Darwin's life and writings a model for 'secular enchantment,' a way of seeing the world that, while thoroughly naturalistic, "finds in nonhuman nature the energy, diversity, beauty, intelligence, and sensibility that might provide a world-friendly alternative to otherworldly values" (xv). . . . Read the rest here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4423.

CFP: "150 Year of Evolution – Darwin's Impact on the Humanities and Social Sciences," San Diego State University November 20-22, 2009.

Researchers and scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit papers addressing the impact of Darwin's ideas in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Both disciplinary-specific and broadly interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. Papers accepted for the symposium will be included in a volume to be published by San Diego State University Press. Please submit abstracts of no more that 500 words in length to mark.wheeler@sdsu.edu no later than 30 November 2008. Accepted papers must be completed by the date of the symposium to be included in the published proceedings. Accepted papers will be announced 1 February 2009. For more information, contact: Mark Wheeler, Symposium ChairDepartment of Philosophy, SDSU(619) 594-6706 or by email: mark.wheeler@sdsu.edu

Lennox, John. "Why Not Every Scientist Worships at Darwin's Feet." SYDNEY MORNING HERALD August 18, 2008.

The leading atheist Richard Dawkins, speaking of this God delusion, as he calls it, offers a succinct summary of Darwin's theory. "Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities . . . will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design." The power of evolution to simulate the illusion of design, says Dawkins, is threatening to what he suggestively calls a "certain kind of mind". Mostly he means unscientific, naive or stupid. But things aren't so simple. Scattered among the world's top scientists are those who do believe in a conscious intention behind nature's processes. I think of people such as Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, and Professor Bill Phillips, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997. The presence of such people poses awkward questions for the view that evolutionary theory and a sophisticated scientific brain lead inexorably towards atheism. There must be more to the so-called "science versus God" story than this. . . . Read teh rest here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/why-not-every-scientist-worships-at-darwins-feet/2008/08/17/1218911450452.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1.

Dennett, Daniel. "Daniel Dennett's Darwinian Mind: an Interview with a 'Dangerous' Man [with Chris Floyd]." SCIENCE AND SPIRIT (2008).

In matters of the mind—the exploration of consciousness, its correlation with the body, its evolutionary foundations, and the possibilities of its creation through computer technology—few voices today speak as boldly as that of philosopher Daniel Dennett. His best-selling works—among them Consciousness Explained and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea—have provoked fierce debates with their rigorous arguments, eloquent polemic and witty, no-holds-barred approach to intellectual combat. He is often ranked alongside Richard Dawkins as one of the most powerful—and, in some circles, feared—proponents of thorough-going Darwinism. Dennett has famously called Darwinism a "universal acid," cutting through every aspect of science, culture, religion, art and human thought. "The question is," he writes in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, "what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be regretted, but . . . what remains is more than enough to build on." Consciousness has arisen from the unwilled, unordained algorithmic processes of natural selection, says Dennett, whose work delivers a strong, extensive attack on the "argument from design" or the "anthropic principle." But a world without a Creator or an "Ultimate Meaning" is not a world without creation or meaning, he insists. When viewed through the solvent of Darwinism, he writes, "the ‘miracles’ of life and consciousness turn out to be even better than we imagined back when we were sure they were inexplicable." Dennett’s prominence does not rest solely on his high public profile in the scientific controversies of our day; it is also based on a large body of academic work dealing with various aspects of the mind, stretching back almost 40 years. Dennett has long been associated with Tufts University, where he is now Distinguished Arts and Sciences Professor and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies. Boston-born, Oxford-educated, he now divides his time between North Andover, Massachusetts, and his farm in Maine, where he grows hay and blueberries, and makes cider wine. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=200.

Czarnecki, Mark. "The Other Darwin." WALRUS MAGAZINE (September 2008).

Darwin’s time has come again. Heralded by new biographies and editions of his works, a dual anniversary looms: 2009 will mark 200 years since his birth, and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Like Marx and Freud, the other towering nineteenth-century humanists whose names are dropped in the same breath as his, he embedded in our world view fundamental concepts that once embraced will not let go. But unlike the variants of Marxist and Freudian thought that have launched a thousand experiments (not all seaworthy), evolution is accepted as fact, not theory, at least as far as biology is concerned. And with biology brought to heel, evolutionists have been hard at work figuring out how and why humans behave and think the way they do, both as individuals and as societies. . . . Read the rest here: http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.09-the-other-darwin-mark-czarnecki-creationism-origin-of-the-species-evolution/.

Weber, Bruce. "Review of Michael Ruse's CHARLES DARWIN." NDPR (August 2008).

Ruse, Michael. Charles Darwin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. Michael Ruse needs no introduction to anyone who has read about the philosophy of biology or the controversies surrounding Darwinism over the past three-and-a-half decades. Ruse, the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, is the author of numerous books on the historical and philosophical aspects of Darwinism (which are characterized by lucid and lively prose) as well as the founding editor of the journal Biology and Philosophy. In Charles Darwin, a volume in the Blackwell Great Minds series, Ruse addresses Darwin's key insights about evolution as presented primarily in On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man and as they continue to inform the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism), as well as their implications for epistemology, ethics, psychology, and religion. Although ostensibly focusing on Charles Darwin's thought, Ruse's real topic is Darwinism as a scientific research tradition and naturalistic worldview and how, as such, it deals with philosophical issues such as progress, purpose and apparent design, as well as the impact of professionalization on evolutionary discourse. These are subjects that Ruse has dealt with in greater detail and depth in a series of relatively recent books: Darwinism Defended, The Darwinian Paradigm, Monad to Man, Mystery of Mysteries, Evolutionary Naturalism, The Evolution Wars, Can a Darwinian be a Christian?, Darwin and Design, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, and Darwinism and it Discontents, as well as in volumes he has co-edited: Debating Design (with William Dembski) and most recently The Philosophy of Biology (with David Hull). These various strands of Ruse's study and thought are brought together here in a single, updated, moderate-length volume that addresses general, serious-minded readers, as well as students, who wish an introductory overview of Ruse's understanding of Darwinism. For information about Darwin himself such readers need to refer to the standard biographies of Janet Browne (1995, 2002) and of Adrian Desmond and James Moore (1991). Readers also could profitably pursue the analysis of Darwinism and its transformation into neo-Darwinism by reading the work of Timothy Shanahan (2004). . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=13889.