I was suckered too...

In case anyone is thinking I have been too rough in publicising quite how many people have fallen for the Annie myth, let me confess, I was suckered by this story too and that is why I am quite so cross to see reality not match up to mythos. 

Here am I, in that piece of whimsy, the Origin of Species in Dub, falling for the myth that Annie's death influenced Darwin's evolutionary writings: 

http://www.infection.bham.ac.uk/BPAG/Dub/Videos/Track8.html

Blogging the Origin

John Whitfield, a London-based science writer is reading a chapter of the Origin each day until Darwin's 200th birthday and is going to be blogging on the experience. I for one will follow his progress with great interest.

Here is the advice I provided in the comments on his blog:

I applaud your efforts. I first read the Origin five years ago in the run-up to my Inaugural Lecture and was surprised how contemporary much of it seemed, particularly when viewed in the light of my own field (bacterial genomics) about which Darwin could have known nothing. Having said that, some parts are hard-going!

If you, or anyone else, wants to supplement your reading of the Origin by having someone read it to you, then one good place to start is Richard Dawkins' five hour abridged audiobook version, which you can get from iTunes (at least in the UK) from here. Also worth a look for the less brave is the Penguin abridgment On Natural Selection. If you want someone to hold your hand while reading, try How to Read Darwin by Mark Ridley or Janet Browne's Darwin's Origin of Species, a Biography.

For the completist, a full 19-hour audio version of the Origin is available from Darwin Online, but as it is computer- generated it is hard work to listen to. More palatable is the Librivox audiobook version, but the readers are amateurs and tolerability varies from chapter to chapter.

I briefly discuss Darwin's use of language in the Origin in my own book The Rough Guide to Evolution and provide a one-page summary, which I won't share here for fear of giving away the plot ;-)

If you want a completely barking mad approach to the Origin, you should try listening/watching The Origin of Species in Dub, a celebration of Darwin's masterpiece through the medium of reggae music, which I created with a Jamaican friend a few years back. Currently, Canadian Lit-Hop artist Baba Brinkman is creating The Rap Guide to Evolution for our celebrations in Birmingham this year. He is also mapping each chapter heading from the Origin on to a separate Rap music track. I am very much looking forward to it. And of course to hearing your thoughts on The Origin as you go through it chapter by chapter!

In search of the ultimate evolutionary concept album part 2...

I had hoped to finish up on my earlier post in the search for the ultimate Darwinian concept album, but am not going to have time to do this thread justice before I disappear for a week’s holiday in sunny (?) Somerset. Instead, let me take the discussion forward but leaving you waiting for more…

In the earlier post, I considered the concept album “Darwin!” by Italian progrock band Banco Del Muto Soccorso. Of similar vintage and another contender for the title of ultimate evolutionary theme album is Rick Wakeman's second solo album, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 1974. Loosely based on the Jules Verne book of the same name, it weaves in many evolutionary themes, as the album’s protagonists encounter among other things:

• “impressions of rock weeds and mosses from the Silurian epoch,” 
  
• a terrifying battle between two sea monsters (an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur) 
  
•  a herd of mastodon, marshalled by a primitive human. 
  

But the album, like the book, is tainted by its association with the long discredited hollow Earth theory, an idea even more absurd than creationism, so it will never satisfy today’s hard-headed evolutionist.

Perhaps worth mentioning in passing are my own efforts in the Origin of Species in Dub, a reggae version of Darwin’s masterpiece, which was created in collaboration with Jamaican scientist Dominic White. I’d like to think we kept as true to what Darwin actually wrote as is possible in an album of this kind. But we have to fall out of this race because we are, at best, strictly amateur musicians (the term “loop monkey” springs to mind).   

Instead, what we really need is a concept album about Darwin, that encompasses a range of genres, is produced by professionals with an international reputation and is performed by established rock stars. And to find what has to be front-runner for the ultimate evolutionary concept album, one has to fast-forward nearly two decades from Banco’s and Wakeman’s efforts to the early 1990s…

I will tell you more when I return from holiday, but for now will leave you with a taster from the album: the late great Austrian white Rap artist Falco rapping about Darwin in a curious mixture of English and German…

 

Original lyrics

 

Hey, hey yah know what I am talking about

Er hieß Charles Darwin, und sie nannten ihn'nen Freak

Keine Bibel, Keine Offenbarung bremsten ihn ein

Denn seine Haltung hielt

 

Nachts - nachts - des Nachts war er aktiv

Aktiver, als man es sich nur vorstellen kann

But tags - tagsüber vermied er Sonnenlicht

And that's the reason daß ich euch sag'

 

Er war der Mann - he was a man

Genie und Partisan - a fascinating man

Sie sah ihn an - he was a man

Sie wußte, daß er - kann

A fascinating man

 

Science and fiction griffen nach dem Universe

Denn da ist more space in it

Darwin dachte dazu nur

Wir gehen auf-recht

And push it to the limit

 

Nachts - nachts - des Nachts war er aktiv

Aktiver, als man es sich nur vorstellen kann

Und tags - tagsüber vermied er Sonnenlicht

And that's the reason daß ich euch sag'

 

Er war der Mann - he was a man

Genie und Partisan - a fascinating man

Sie sah ihn an - he was a man

Sie wußte, daß er - kann

A fascinating man

 

Er war der Mann - he was a man

Genie und Partisan - a fascinating man

Sie sah ihn an - he was a man

Und wußte aufrecht geht der - Mann

A fascinating man

 

Can you hear me, Charles?

 

 

English Translation

 

Hey, hey yah know what I am talking about

He was Charles Darwin, and they called him a freak

No Bible, No revelation to hold him back

That was his attitude

 

At night - at night - by night he was active

More active than you can imagine

But by day - by day he avoided the sunlight

And that's the reason that I tell you…

 

He was the man - he was a man

Genius and partisan - a fascinating man

She looked at him - he was a man

She knew that he - can

A fascinating man

 

Science and fiction grappled with the Universe

Because there is more space in it

Darwin thought only about this

We go to law

And push it to the limit

 

At night - at night - by night he was active

More active than you can imagine

And by day - by day he avoided the sunlight

And that's the reason that I tell you…

 

He was the man - he was a man

Genius and partisan - a fascinating man

She looked at him - he was a man

She knew that he - can

A fascinating man

 

He was the man - he was a man

Genius and partisan - a fascinating man

She looked at him - he was a man

And, knew that upright stood the man

A fascinating man

 

Can you hear me, Charles?