Sublime

“In some respects,” Gruber concluded, “Charles Darwin’s greatest works represent interpretative compilations of facts first gathered by others.” He was a lateral-thinking integrator.

Darwin.

This vast realm of geographical ignorance reduced European activity in the Outer World to an archipelago of settlements, mines and trading depots connected by a skein of pathways kept open only by constant effort.

Apart from a very limited amount of state sponsorship, it was usually the prospect of commercial gain or of new lands for settlement which funded exploration – a misleading term, which usually signified the ‘mapping’ of existing trade paths through local informants. But the propulsion of economic or demographic need was spasmodic at best.

I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

special evolution entirely inoffensive. One of Darwin’s earliest and most vigorous champions, the extremely accomplished American botanist Asa Gray (1810–88), was a devout Christian who saw such evolution as a manifestation of God’s creative power in the fabric of nature.