IP: Re: Darwin in Kansas

[David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>X-Sender: gdyson@mail.cc.wwu.edu
>Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 07:15:03 -0700
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: George Dyson <gdyson@cc.wwu.edu>
>
>
>[SCIENCE, 27 August 1999, p. 1355]
>
>
>Darwin in Kansas
>
>Re: Darwin-Free Biology (Science 285, 6 August 1999, p. 813):
>
>Where is Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) when we need him most? As
>he warned the Kansas State Board of Education in 1794:
>
>"The world itself might have been generated, rather than created; that is,
>it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings,
>increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a
>sudden evolution of the whole by the Almighty fiat. --What a magnificent idea
>of the infinite power of THE GREAT ARCHITECT! THE CAUSE OF CAUSES! PARENT
>OF PARENTS! ENS ENTIUM! For if we may compare infinities, it would seem to
>require a greater infinity of power to cause the causes of effects, than to
>cause the effects themselves."
>
>[Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life (1794), vol. 1, p.
>509.]
>
>--------
>
>--
>George B. Dyson                                      gdyson@cc.wwu.edu
>______________________________________________________________________