Happy 200th Birthday to Two Men Who Changed the World

Abraham Lincoln, arguably the man who saved the Union and the man who put this nation on the path to the realization of the concept that "all men are created equal and are born with certain inalienable rights" meant more than just "rich white dudes." Beyond that, Lincoln also brought about the first transcontinental railroad with the Pacific Railway Act. Until the transcontinental railroads were built (almost all with massive government backing), it was easier to go from New York to London than from New York to San Francisco.


But the really great man who was born 200 years ago today was Charles Darwin, the father of modern biology.


Over years of exploration and then decades of thoughtful refinement, Charles Darwin refined his observations into one of the most important scientific works of the last 1,000 years: On the Origin of Species. Published in 1859, his book was as important to science as Issac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Darwin and Alfred Wallace brought biology fully from the umbrella of religion into the world of science, where things operate under principles and laws that can be discovered by observation, thinking and experimentation.

On the Origin of the Species was, and remains, so provocative that 150 years after its publication, the forces of supernatural determinism are still fighting rear-guard actions (though mainly in places where "book-larnin'" is not valued, such as Kansas, Texas and the governor's office in Alaska).

Happy birthday!