Contribution To Darwin's Work
Interestingly enough, it seems that Darwin's maladies actually may have contributed a lot to what many believe was a long and fruitful creative process in science. George Pickering, in his book Creative Malady (1974), wrote that isolated from social life and obligations of a "normal" scientist, such as administrative and teaching work, Darwin had ample time and material comforts for researching, thinking, and writing extensively, which he did. Despite the long periods of unproductivity caused by ill health, Darwin produced much research. Darwin often complained that his malady robbed him of half a lifetime, but even so, many believe that his scientific contributions can be compared favorably to those of such figures as Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.
Darwin himself wrote about this, in his autobiographical "Recollections of the Development of my Mind and Character" (1876):
Lastly, I have had ample leisure from not having to earn my own bread. Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement.Read more about this topic: Charles Darwin's Health
Famous quotes containing the words contribution to, contribution, darwin and/or work:
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“Whate’er we leave to God, God does,
And blesses us;
The work we choose should be our own,
God leaves alone.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)