The most consequential book in the history of natural science turns 150 today.
Insofar as birthdays are public events. Darwin returned to England in 1836, and sat on his book for quite some time, in no small part because he didn’t want to piss people off. He did anyway, perhaps moreso in the last few decades than at any other time.

Of course, the book’s importance and genius can be measure by the extent to which it continues to allude human understanding. I’m currently struggling to write an essay about the place of relativism in social work. I’ve got a very respected social work textbook that gets relativism staggeringly, tragically wrong. The section gets a little over half of a page, and cites a single source (which I’m currently waiting for on Inter-library loan) only. Ironically the textbook concerns using research in social work practice, and emphatically discusses always giving research and ideas the benefit of the doubt, and critiquing something based on the strongest case one could make.

I think both of these things reflect how incapable humans are of living with deep uncertainty. Evolution by natural selection operates by a set of criteria that are forever changing, with no end goal in mind. A difficult concept to grasp, but I think that many people’s instinctive dis-ease with evolution is accurate, however misguided the arguments might be. Evolution by natural selection does have metaphysical and epistemic implications which challenges human hubris very deeply.

Thank goodness.