Correspondence Of Charles Darwin
The British naturalist Charles Darwin had correspondence with numerous other luminaries of his age and members of his family. These have provided many insights about the nineteenth century, from scientific exploration and travel to religious debate and discussion. The letters also illuminate many aspects of Darwin's work: the development of his scientific ideas; his opinions on issues he did not publish about (his letters to Asa Gray, for example, show his changing opinions on the American Civil War); matters about his character and health; the ways in which he relied upon correspondence for much of his investigations into natural history; and the ways in which he marshalled scientific support for his ideas amongst friends and colleagues.
Analysis and publication of Darwin's correspondence has been a main focus of the so-called Darwin Industry of historical scholarship.
Read more about Correspondence Of Charles Darwin: History, List of Notable Persons With Whom Darwin Corresponded
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“Life! Life! Don’t let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament. It makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“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)