A curious thing about creationists. I try to study the minds of these strange people, who still, 150 years after Alfred Wallace, retain the primitive mindset of the eighteenth century when people thought that animal species, including the naked ape, had been created, each in its own place, by a finger-pointing white-bearded figure in the sky. It is as if we still had, living among us, people who believed in phlogiston, or humors, or the heart as the seat of emotions; a glimpse back into a distant past of primitive ideas about the world around us.
So I study them, much as a time traveler visiting the Dark Ages might, or a traveler to the deepest Amazon finding a previously uncontacted tribe.
And in the case of creationists, these strange throwbacks living still among us, I try to see the world through their eyes, wonder what strange shadows that imperfect organ is throwing on to the retina of these good simple people as they struggle to come to grips with the realities of several hundred years of scientific advances.
Here is one for you. What do creationists see when they look in the evolutionary mirror? What do they see when they look at Chimpanzee or Gorilla? Do they see both as just another mammal, like Cat or Dog, Kangaroo or Opossum, Platypus or Echidna? Do they not see the close resemblances to us in the face, the expressions, the hands and feet, the body, the behavior, the movement, the social groups, the young? Do they not say, well, my cousin is a hairy man, but he is still my cousin? Do they not say there but for the grace of Darwin go we? That these close cousins just traveled a different path from an obviously identical starting point?
And looking at the faces of their cousins, are they not inspired to investigate further, find that the resemblance is not just skin deep but extends through brain and skeleton and into the most fundamental unit of evolution the DNA?
I mean it is one thing to believe that the old silverback in the sky created beasts of burden and sheep and cattle, obviously different to, and, from an anthropocentric view, inferior to, humans, as part of his reward of dominion over all as long as you didn’t eat of the “tree of evolutionary knowledge” scheme. But the bronze age sheepherders typing out the Old Testament on a piece of goatskin didn’t know about the great apes, or even the monkeys, which did not live around what the desert nomads thought of as the centre of the universe but which we now call the Middle East, a kind of evolutionary backwater with barely enough species known to fill a boat.
If there had been a band of gorillas living by the Dead Sea, or a band of chimpanzees living on the Mount of Olives, do you think one of the sheepherders might have modified the relevant bit of his creation mythology to read, “And then Yahweh created the great apes, and he took a rib from a chimpanzee and it became the first human”?
With that kind of mythology, one of Darwin’s early ancestors, say living in Ancient Athens, might well have been inspired to discover the reality of evolution long before Alfred Wallace. And in that case, would the primitive members of the Texas School Board still be demanding that creationism be taught? How long does it take for the blindingly obvious to be accepted?
-- David Horton
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-horton/none-so-blind_b_516381.html
Showing posts with label Alfred Wallace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Wallace. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2020
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Sunday, December 29, 2019
Charles Darwin is the father of modern biology and the man who killed God. This article about Charles Darwin obviously belongs in this blog.
Charles Darwin: Father of Modern Biology
Charles Darwin’s father once told his son, "You will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family," because Darwin, an apathetic student, seemed only interested in dogs, hunting, and catching rats. But at 22, when he had the opportunity to join an expedition on the ship Beagle, Darwin’s life changed. One result of that trip was On the Origin of Species, a landmark book published in 1859 that described the theory of evolution. It was a revolutionary idea, maintaining that each species of every plant and animal gradually evolves from common ancestors and, over time, develops traits that help it respond to environmental pressures and enables it to survive. Modern scientists consider this theory one of the most important scientific advances in history.
Darwin was born February 12, 1809, in England, to a prominent physician named Robert Darwin. His mother died when Darwin, the fifth of six children, was only eight. His father, now the central figure in his life, was dismayed that his son was not interested in school, preferring long, solitary walks observing nature and collecting insects, leaves, and rocks.
Later, Darwin attended medical school at Edinburgh University to please his father. But young Darwin was aghast at the barbarity of the surgery performed there and thought the lectures were "intolerably dull," so his grades suffered. Disappointed again by his son’s academic indifference, Dr. Darwin enrolled his son at Cambridge University, hoping he would become a clergyman. But at Cambridge, Darwin serendipitously met the most important mentor of his life and chose another path.
In the early nineteenth century, collecting beetles became a craze. College students competed to see who could find a new species of beetle, and young men went on nature walks hoping to best their fellow collectors by finding rare specimens. Darwin needed some expert advice to beat his rival, Charles "Beetles" Babington, so he went to John Stevens Henslow, a professor of botany. Thus began a relationship between the two men that lasted a lifetime. It was Henslow who encouraged Darwin to join the Beagle expedition even though Darwin’s father was against it, calling the trip "a wild scheme." So on December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin set out on a five-year, round-the-world sea voyage.
Although he suffered from acute seasickness in the beginning, the trip was just what Darwin needed, and he explored and collected specimens wherever the ship anchored. Most of the trip was spent mapping the South American coastline; although he didn’t know it at the time, the five-week stopover in the Galápagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, would prove to be a pivotal moment in his scientific thinking. There, Darwin collected, dissected, preserved, and labeled specimens from all branches of zoology and made notes on their environment, appearance, and even their stomach contents. When he returned to England in 1836, Darwin carried with him about 3,000 pages of notes and about 5,000 specimens.
Soon Darwin began to ask himself questions about what he had found in South America. Why, for example, did members of one species isolated on an island have different characteristics from a similar species on the continent or on another island? As was popular at the time, Darwin joined scholarly groups such as the Zoological Society and the Geological Society of London. As a member, Darwin frequently attended lectures and presented papers to enthusiastic audiences. In addition, societies were meeting places where he could discuss his scientific findings and, more importantly, his many questions.
To Darwin, it seemed the most important piece of the evolutionary puzzle concerned the bird species he had collected on the Galápagos Islands. Birds that Darwin thought were grosbeaks, wrens, and orioles were in fact 13 different species of the same kind of bird—a finch. These finches had various types of beaks: some were short and stubby while others were long and pointy. Other beak types ranged between these two extremes. Darwin observed that the type of beak seemed to vary according to the type of food available where the finches lived.
Darwin’s theory of evolution started taking shape after he began considering these differences, and he even drew a sketch of an evolutionary tree in his notebook. Basically, the theory states that of the offspring produced by a species, only those suited to find food, mates, and nesting places in their environment will survive to genetically pass on their traits to the next generation. In an environment where the only food is hard seeds, only birds with beaks that can crush such seeds are likely to survive. Evolution takes place as traits are passed down through each generation; eventually, members of one species will gradually change until a new species develops. Darwin called this process "evolution through natural selection."
In 1838, Darwin began to write out his ideas, but lacking confidence in his own credentials as a scientist, did not publish them. Darwin worried about how his church and his family would react to his new theory, which challenged religious beliefs in divine creation. His wife, Emma, the mother of his ten children, was a devout Christian. Darwin eventually put snippets of his theory into a book, The Voyage of the Beagle, published in 1839, and in l844, he outlined his theory in a manuscript he later circulated among a few friends.
At the same time, Darwin worked to develop his scientific expertise, publishing on various topics in natural history and corresponding with scientists such as botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, geologist Charles Lyell, and Alfred Russel Wallace, a young, self-educated biologist like himself. When Darwin learned in 1858 that Wallace was planning to publish his own paper on natural selection, he realized that (after working far longer on the concept than Wallace) he was about to lose the glory of being the first to announce the theory. So Charles Lyell suggested the two men jointly present papers on natural selection in July 1858 at a meeting of the Linnean Society, a natural history society. But the papers created little excitement.
When Darwin published On the Origin of Species the next year, however, the book proved to be unexpectedly popular. But a storm of criticism arose too, as Darwin had feared. Some of his friends and colleagues defended him and his theory, but others bitterly attacked him. In 1871, his book The Descent of Man claimed that people were just another species of animal and that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. Cartoons of Darwin with a long beard and an ape body suddenly appeared in the press, but Darwin stood by his scientific findings; worrying about public opinion never seemed to be part of his temperament.
Darwin is considered the father of modern biology because he recognized the common evolutionary thread that all living things share. His work included 19 books and many scholarly papers, which spanned subjects as diverse as barnacles, coral, the relationship between plants and their pollinators, and the role of earthworms in creating mold. Darwin attributed his achievements to his "methodical habits" and his "complex and diversified mental qualities." He wrote, "Of these the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience . . . and a fair share of invention and commonsense."
He died April 19, 1882, and was buried at Westminster Abbey close to Sir Isaac Newton, the man who discovered gravity. Darwin’s father would finally have been proud.
Charles Darwin’s father once told his son, "You will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family," because Darwin, an apathetic student, seemed only interested in dogs, hunting, and catching rats. But at 22, when he had the opportunity to join an expedition on the ship Beagle, Darwin’s life changed. One result of that trip was On the Origin of Species, a landmark book published in 1859 that described the theory of evolution. It was a revolutionary idea, maintaining that each species of every plant and animal gradually evolves from common ancestors and, over time, develops traits that help it respond to environmental pressures and enables it to survive. Modern scientists consider this theory one of the most important scientific advances in history.
Darwin was born February 12, 1809, in England, to a prominent physician named Robert Darwin. His mother died when Darwin, the fifth of six children, was only eight. His father, now the central figure in his life, was dismayed that his son was not interested in school, preferring long, solitary walks observing nature and collecting insects, leaves, and rocks.
Later, Darwin attended medical school at Edinburgh University to please his father. But young Darwin was aghast at the barbarity of the surgery performed there and thought the lectures were "intolerably dull," so his grades suffered. Disappointed again by his son’s academic indifference, Dr. Darwin enrolled his son at Cambridge University, hoping he would become a clergyman. But at Cambridge, Darwin serendipitously met the most important mentor of his life and chose another path.
In the early nineteenth century, collecting beetles became a craze. College students competed to see who could find a new species of beetle, and young men went on nature walks hoping to best their fellow collectors by finding rare specimens. Darwin needed some expert advice to beat his rival, Charles "Beetles" Babington, so he went to John Stevens Henslow, a professor of botany. Thus began a relationship between the two men that lasted a lifetime. It was Henslow who encouraged Darwin to join the Beagle expedition even though Darwin’s father was against it, calling the trip "a wild scheme." So on December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin set out on a five-year, round-the-world sea voyage.
Although he suffered from acute seasickness in the beginning, the trip was just what Darwin needed, and he explored and collected specimens wherever the ship anchored. Most of the trip was spent mapping the South American coastline; although he didn’t know it at the time, the five-week stopover in the Galápagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, would prove to be a pivotal moment in his scientific thinking. There, Darwin collected, dissected, preserved, and labeled specimens from all branches of zoology and made notes on their environment, appearance, and even their stomach contents. When he returned to England in 1836, Darwin carried with him about 3,000 pages of notes and about 5,000 specimens.
Soon Darwin began to ask himself questions about what he had found in South America. Why, for example, did members of one species isolated on an island have different characteristics from a similar species on the continent or on another island? As was popular at the time, Darwin joined scholarly groups such as the Zoological Society and the Geological Society of London. As a member, Darwin frequently attended lectures and presented papers to enthusiastic audiences. In addition, societies were meeting places where he could discuss his scientific findings and, more importantly, his many questions.
To Darwin, it seemed the most important piece of the evolutionary puzzle concerned the bird species he had collected on the Galápagos Islands. Birds that Darwin thought were grosbeaks, wrens, and orioles were in fact 13 different species of the same kind of bird—a finch. These finches had various types of beaks: some were short and stubby while others were long and pointy. Other beak types ranged between these two extremes. Darwin observed that the type of beak seemed to vary according to the type of food available where the finches lived.
Darwin’s theory of evolution started taking shape after he began considering these differences, and he even drew a sketch of an evolutionary tree in his notebook. Basically, the theory states that of the offspring produced by a species, only those suited to find food, mates, and nesting places in their environment will survive to genetically pass on their traits to the next generation. In an environment where the only food is hard seeds, only birds with beaks that can crush such seeds are likely to survive. Evolution takes place as traits are passed down through each generation; eventually, members of one species will gradually change until a new species develops. Darwin called this process "evolution through natural selection."
In 1838, Darwin began to write out his ideas, but lacking confidence in his own credentials as a scientist, did not publish them. Darwin worried about how his church and his family would react to his new theory, which challenged religious beliefs in divine creation. His wife, Emma, the mother of his ten children, was a devout Christian. Darwin eventually put snippets of his theory into a book, The Voyage of the Beagle, published in 1839, and in l844, he outlined his theory in a manuscript he later circulated among a few friends.
At the same time, Darwin worked to develop his scientific expertise, publishing on various topics in natural history and corresponding with scientists such as botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, geologist Charles Lyell, and Alfred Russel Wallace, a young, self-educated biologist like himself. When Darwin learned in 1858 that Wallace was planning to publish his own paper on natural selection, he realized that (after working far longer on the concept than Wallace) he was about to lose the glory of being the first to announce the theory. So Charles Lyell suggested the two men jointly present papers on natural selection in July 1858 at a meeting of the Linnean Society, a natural history society. But the papers created little excitement.
When Darwin published On the Origin of Species the next year, however, the book proved to be unexpectedly popular. But a storm of criticism arose too, as Darwin had feared. Some of his friends and colleagues defended him and his theory, but others bitterly attacked him. In 1871, his book The Descent of Man claimed that people were just another species of animal and that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor. Cartoons of Darwin with a long beard and an ape body suddenly appeared in the press, but Darwin stood by his scientific findings; worrying about public opinion never seemed to be part of his temperament.
Darwin is considered the father of modern biology because he recognized the common evolutionary thread that all living things share. His work included 19 books and many scholarly papers, which spanned subjects as diverse as barnacles, coral, the relationship between plants and their pollinators, and the role of earthworms in creating mold. Darwin attributed his achievements to his "methodical habits" and his "complex and diversified mental qualities." He wrote, "Of these the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience . . . and a fair share of invention and commonsense."
He died April 19, 1882, and was buried at Westminster Abbey close to Sir Isaac Newton, the man who discovered gravity. Darwin’s father would finally have been proud.
Monday, November 4, 2019
This copy & paste job has lots of interesting stuff about Charles Darwin, his wife, and Alfred Wallace who had the same ideas Darwin had. This motivated Darwin to finish the book he was writing, the book that changed the world, On the Origin of Species.
CAPTURING DARWIN'S DILEMMA: THE SCRIPTWRITER'S STORY
In crafting a film about Charles Darwin's great dilemma—whether or not to go public with his incendiary theory of evolution—scriptwriter John Goldsmith faced some quandaries of his own: How do you offer a fresh portrayal of one of the world's most iconic figures? Can you convey the essence of Darwin's scientific ideas in the context of a compelling drama? What's more, how do you avoid the "gotchas" of countless Darwin experts apt to catch any tiny inaccuracy? In this interview, Goldsmith, who years ago traced part of Darwin's Beagle voyage to better understand the man, explains his fascination with both Darwin and his wife Emma, and the extraordinary research he did to get the details right.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
NOVA: In a film about Darwin, why did you open with a scene about Alfred Wallace?
John Goldsmith: That's where the story begins. Always begin at the beginning. The whole concept of the film was to take a piece of Darwin's life and tell the story of On the Origin of Species and evolution generally within that framework, right? And the trigger for Darwin publishing anything on evolution was this letter that came out of the blue from Wallace. It's kind of like a spear thrown that goes thunk! into Darwin's heart as he sits there peacefully in Down House in North Kent. It's really where the story starts.
Q: In the script, you describe the set using Wallace's own words. What research did you do for this?
Goldsmith: Well, Wallace, God bless him, wrote lots of autobiography. As well as collecting and selling specimens, he wrote books. And he wrote a book about his experiences in Borneo and Malacca, and that book contains a description of his room.
Q: It's one of many instances where you tied your details—dialogue and sets and other parts of the script—to historical documents, which I found impressive.
Goldsmith: As far as I could, because even if one can't precisely get it right in terms of props and production, at least the whole team knew what we were aiming for.
Q: When we first see Darwin, he's in his study. He's making a beehive out of cardboard. What impression did you want to give of him right away?
Goldsmith: Well, that's an interesting example. You know, more is known about Darwin than he even knew about himself, because he wrote incessant letters. He was virtually a recluse for most of his life, and his equivalent of the telephone and e-mail was the postal service. So lots and lots of letters. And there's a wonderful thing online now, the Darwin Correspondence Project. The crucial years that I was interested in, they're all there.
"He was a lovely father. They were a very unusual family."
I wanted to know exactly what he was doing on the date when the story starts. And I managed, by going through all this correspondence, to discover that he had just received a letter from his brother Erasmus and was making this little model beehive. Erasmus had sent him a drawing and instructions on how to make it, and that's what he was doing.
Q: That's remarkable, that you pinned down that moment.
Goldsmith: If it had been any other subject, really, one wouldn't have bothered. One would have made something up. But the world is full of Darwin experts who know what he had for tea on May the 4th of 1862, down to the last lump of sugar, and they're all sitting there with their pencils poised.
Q: You were trying to avoid their gotchas.
Goldsmith: Exactly, yes. But it's also a classic example of reality driving the creative side of things, because it's a wonderful example of the kind of man Darwin was—the meticulous care he took. He was interested in everything.
A VERY NICE FELLOW
Q: From all that you've read of Darwin, how would you sum up his character?
Goldsmith: Well, he's a character who, alas, has vanished from the world: the independent scientist. He isn't holding a job down; he has no chair at a university. He can do exactly what he wants. And because Darwin realized that if any example in nature upset his theory the theory was dead, he made it his business to look into absolutely every aspect he could think of in nature.
When you delve into the detail of his life and the evolution of his theory, it really hits home the kind of extraordinary range of his activities, everything he was interested in.
Q: From barnacles...
Goldsmith: From barnacles to the beehive.
Q: If it weren't for Wallace sending this letter, do you think Darwin would have ever published his theory?
Goldsmith: I don't know. I don't think anybody does. It's very hard to say. He'd written about half of [what he called] "the big book." My feeling is he probably would have prevaricated for some years more. I think, inevitably, he would have published, because if it hadn't been Wallace coming up with something similar, somebody else would have. There were a lot of people working in this area. But given his druthers—as they say in North America—he probably would have left it until he was on his deathbed in order to avoid all the fuss.
Q: Why would Wallace send Darwin this letter and his paper on evolution?
Goldsmith: Well, Wallace didn't actually ask Darwin to comment. He just asked him to pass it on to [the eminent scientist] Sir Charles Lyell. Darwin and Wallace had met. They'd corresponded. Darwin was a client. [Darwin had bought specimens from Wallace.] So, really, Darwin was a contact.
Darwin came from the upper middle class. He'd inherited a chunk of the Wedgewood family fortune. His father, Dr. [Robert] Darwin, had made an awful lot of money. He was extremely well connected in politics and literature. Wallace was from a completely different background and sort of knew nobody. And of course, in Victorian England, as I suppose it is today, it's who you know. And Wallace obviously liked Darwin. Darwin was an extremely likable man. He wasn't a snob. He was a very nice fellow.
"A lot of the dialogue in the movie is verbatim from letters and diaries..."
Q: When Darwin reads the letter, he becomes physically ill.
Goldsmith: Yes.
Q: I assume that detail wasn't documented in the historical record.
Goldsmith: (laughs) Yes. Well, we don't know whether he threw up, but he had that tendency. Any kind of strain would make him physically ill. He suffered terribly from this very mysterious illness.
Q: And this letter certainly would have been upsetting. You mentioned that about half of Darwin's "big book" was already written by the time he received it.
Goldsmith: Yes. Then, because of the necessity to get something out, he abandoned the big book and started again. On the Origin of Species is a much shorter book. It was intended to be a sketch. It grew into 300 or 400 pages. But the big book was going to be 1,000 pages, I would think.
Q: So, in a way, Wallace did Darwin and the world a favor, because what we got is such a readable book.
Goldsmith: It's incredible. It's amazing. He was a naturally excellent writer. He had a very accessible, easy style. He never talks down. He never oversimplifies. But his mind is so clear and his perceptions are so straightforward that any lay reader like me can understand.
LOVING PARENTS
Q: Early in the film you introduce Darwin's children, scampering around the house. What do we know about Darwin as a father?
Goldsmith: He was a lovely father. They were a very unusual family. They lived in a way that very few upper-class Victorian families lived. They had a very loving, informal, very modern attitude to children and to child rearing. Absolutely a million miles away from what we think of as a Victorian upper-class way of thinking, where you had a formal handshake with your parents at six o'clock before going to bed, and that's about all you saw of them. In the Darwin house, they believed in playing with their children and talking to them and being with them.
Q: It's endearing.
Goldsmith: It is.
Q: Why is the memory of Annie, Darwin's daughter who died at 10 of scarlet fever, so significant in the film?
Goldsmith: It was the great emotional moment of Darwin's life. What remnants he had of Christian faith, I think, were absolutely killed stone dead by that. It touched him enormously. He adored her, absolutely adored her. They had a very special relationship. And he had to watch her die. I mean, it was absolutely appalling.
"I suspect that Emma came to realize that her faith could survive evolution."
Q: The film pivots on Darwin's relationship with Emma. How did you get a sense of their relationship? Was there correspondence?
Goldsmith: Obviously, they lived together 50 years, so they didn't often write to each other. But he occasionally went away to take the water cure and so on, and they would write to each other. Also, Emma kept diaries. My great friend Edna Healey, who wrote the life of Emma (Emma Darwin: The Inspirational Wife of a Genius), used the diaries and the letters extensively. You get a very good picture of Emma from that. She was, how can I put it? She was quite lazy. She didn't get up very early in the morning. She liked to lie in bed.
What neither of them were—which was remarkable for those days—neither of them was a snob. England was very, very class-conscious. And Darwin and Emma simply weren't that way, Emma particularly. She wasn't interested in fine clothes. She was sort of casual, a very loving, wonderful mother.
We're very lucky. She wrote children's stories, and we found one that she'd written, which we used bits of in the movie. And they're enchanting, they're absolutely lovely, and they give you the person.
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THEM
Q: What about Emma's religious views?
Goldsmith: She was a convinced Christian. She was a Unitarian, which means she wasn't a kind of raving evangelical. To quote Erasmus Darwin, Charles's grandfather, "Unitarianism is a featherbed for fallen Christians." I love that. So she wasn't a fundamentalist, but she did believe in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. She believed in the afterlife and so on. And it was a sorrow to her that her husband didn't. She writes somewhere that she believes their love will go on forever, and she would love it if he believed the same. He couldn't, really.
Q: You have a line—it's one of my favorite lines in the film—where Emma refers to "Notebook D," a famous notebook in which Darwin writes about evolution, as "Notebook D, for the devil." Did you conjure that yourself?
Goldsmith: I'm afraid I did, yes. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is verbatim from letters and diaries and so on, but I have allowed myself creative leeway occasionally, and that's one of my little things, yes. I hope I'll be forgiven by the Darwin community. I don't suppose I will be.
Q: Another great line, I believe, is a direct quote: When Darwin is writing to his friend Joseph Hooker about his ideas, he uses the phrase "it is like confessing a murder."
Goldsmith: Yes. It's so hard for us to imagine ourselves back in that time when it was like murdering something. He realized the intellectual consequences and theological consequences and philosophical consequences of what he was thinking.
Q: Do you think that, ultimately, Emma was able to reconcile her religious views with Darwin's view of evolution?
Goldsmith: This is an area I didn't go deeply into. But the Anglican Church and, indeed, the Roman Catholic Church, quickly came to terms with evolution. After the initial outrage and shock, horror, people realized that this actually didn't chop the legs off conventional religion at all. And I suspect that Emma came to realize that her faith could survive evolution, as the faith of millions and millions and millions of Christians has.
Q: Was it challenging to tell this story without having the screen time to develop characters like Joseph Hooker and Charles Lyell more?
Goldsmith: Not really, because it's a domestic drama, and that's what we wanted to do. If we'd had millions, we could have done it a completely different way, but we didn't. And, in a way, I'm rather glad we didn't, because I think, as a domestic drama on a small scale, it's much better for television. Also, it focuses the mind wonderfully.
It's really about these few terrible weeks in Darwin's life. And it's really about Darwin coming clean to Emma, if you like, and then having to have that final conversation, a conversation about God, which they'd avoided throughout their marriage. They'd never really talked about it. They'd agreed to just leave that to one side. Most marriages survive on those strategies. But in these circumstances, they simply have to have the conversation, and they do, and it's the emotional climax of the movie.
Emma then has my favorite line, when Darwin's feeding flies to a sundew flower, and he asks her about publishing, and she says—and this is a verbatim quote from Emma—"I suppose you're going to prove it's an animal." It's her way of saying, "Yeah, go ahead and publish." She had a wit, Emma did.
Q: Well, we're very glad that those few terrible weeks took place, aren't we?
Goldsmith: We are. Changed the world.
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