150 Years of Natural Selection

150 Year ago today the scientific world was introduced to a great new scientific concept, and in that time few realms of science have been so hotly debated or passionately disputed by the ignorant, closed-minded, and stupid.  The anniversary is chronicled by the beagle project and many other well known blogs...

It was the meeting of the Linnean Society of London on July 1st, 1858.  One month before the publication of both Darwin and Wallace's papers, and these lucky scientists got a preview.  Can you imagine being there, hearing these ideas for the first time.  How thrilling, I wonder how many of them knew just how important these papers would be.  I wish I could know what questions they asked, what the feeling of the audience had been.  Did some of them truly think nothing of importance had happened that day?  Or did some of them have that burning feeling of witnessing history being made.  I hope it was the latter, I like to imagine the feeling of scientific revolution.

My favorite picture of Darwin