Darwin's eyes

The most famous image of Charles Darwin is a cartoon that combines his face with the body of an overgrown monkey. Darwin did reconnect humans to the family of living creatures. He did this mainly through careful observation of the living world that surrounded him

Dodi Goldman,

There are few pictures in which Charles Darwin looks straight at us. One such picture was drawn in 1840, long before "The Origin of Species" was published. He and his new wife Emma sat separately, in fancy clothes, before the painter George Richmond, for a classic family portrait of British aristocracy. In later photographs, Darwin usually appears in profile, which does not allow us to perceive the expression in his eyes. The picture that appears here is unusual because of the view. There is no other picture where you can look like this into the eyes of the adult Darwin, and penetrate through them into his special personality.

When Nicolaus Copernicus overturned the world order and stated that the earth revolves around the sun and does not serve as the center of the universe, this did not involve a philosophical upheaval for him. Copernicus, a devout churchman, continued to believe in the act of creation and did not see a contradiction between the principles of religion and a world centered on the sun. Darwin, a devout Christian who almost became a priest, brought about a revolution that in a deep sense was more far-reaching than that of Copernicus. Man, the crown of creation, is nothing but a creature like all other creatures, part of the animal family that descends from a common ancestor.

Darwin's discovery required a new understanding of the essence of man, and above all a reexamination of religious belief. One has to perform spectacular acts of sleight of hand to reconcile evolution through natural selection with the stories of creation. Darwin, a wise man who did not know how to pretend, reached a crisis of faith at a young age: "I did not easily agree to give up my faith," he writes in his autobiography, "... but gradually I began to understand that the Old Testament - about the false stories of world history in it, the story of the Tower of Babel , the way in which it attributes to God the image of a vengeful tyrant - is no more reliable than other books, for example of Hindus or barbarians. The more we know about the fixed laws of nature, the less likely miracles seem... Slowly I began to lose my faith. The old idea of ​​natural design, an argument that used to seem absolute to me, has failed since the laws of natural selection were discovered. Everything in nature is a consequence of fixed laws."

The Darwinist theory became one of the great enemies of religion. 150 years after the "Origin of Species" fundamentalist forces, mainly Christian but also Muslim and Jewish, are fighting the idea of ​​evolution and the descent of species from a common origin through natural selection. Many scientific ideas do not fit in with the stories of the Bible, but the Darwinist challenge to man's status as God's beloved, the creature created in his image and likeness, is intolerable in the eyes of the religious establishment.

Heretical reflections

Darwin realized that his theory not only removed God from the picture, but could undermine the good social order that the English aristocracy wanted to maintain. Darwin was not satisfied with the earthquake he caused. He was a shy and modest man, and he understood very well the pain of his loved ones, who saw his research as a danger to Christian morality. His wife, Emma Wedgwood, was a devout and innocent Christian. All her life she feared that because of her husband's apostate thoughts he would be sent to hell. In that case, she feared, she and her husband would not be able to be together in the next world.

Over 20 years passed from the moment when Darwin realized that his theory on the origin of species and their evolution made sense, until he published his work. Many researchers have tried to explain the delay. Some of them claim that Darwin insisted on the deep meaning of the theory and anticipated the storm it could cause. Due to his compromising nature and his desire not to cause a revolution, Darwin prevented the publication, and it is possible that he would not have published his work if Alfred Wallace had not come up with a similar idea. Other researchers attribute the delay to uncompromising professionalism. Darwin sought conclusive evidence for each and every argument. He analyzed the problems and weak points in the theory and tried to prepare well-founded answers to every counter-argument. Three qualities - strictness and professionalism, a comfortable and compromising character, and patience - characterize his work, his behavior and his way of life. It seems to me that these qualities are reflected in his picture, shown here.

Darwin didn't just shock the religious establishment. The scientific world before the "Origin of Species" is not at all similar to the one after it. Darwin powerfully shook the way of human thinking. In fact, it is difficult to think of progress in any of the fields of knowledge we are familiar with today - from robotics, drug development, planning algorithms in mathematics, understanding economics, modern linguistic theories to the establishment and establishment of new fields of thought such as evolutionary psychology - without Darwin's theory of evolution.

There is a great contrast between the man - quiet, modest and shy - and the power of the revolution he brought about. "He was a reluctant revolutionary," says Dr. Samdar Raisfeld, a molecular biologist and author of the book 'Darwin in Ayalon Darom'. "He was humble, open and transparent, and especially humane. So human, that one can feel the pain, or at least the sorrow he felt as a result of the storm he caused as part of his role as 'Darwin the man of science'. As if Darwin the man suffered the results of the actions of Darwin the scientist".

In a word: modesty

The theory of evolution that changed the face of science forces man to look at himself from the outside and to re-understand his place in the universe. In the last 150 years, many have used Darwin's name, while creating one or another distorted variation of his words. If I had to choose one word that, in my opinion, sums up the philosophical message in "The Origin of Species", I would choose the word chastity. The theory - just like the man - forces us to understand our true place in the universe and nature. An intelligent animal, successful, strong, ruling the world, but ultimately, one of a huge family of living creatures.

As I write I keep looking at the portrait of Darwin placed in front of me. 200 years have passed since he was born, 150 years since he published his work, 131 years since his death. In his portrait you mainly see eyes, and when you look at the content you notice the expression. The eyes are smart, penetrating and definitely also painful. Eyes that express wisdom alongside sorrow. Eyes that I want to give here my interpretation of what they express: Please forgive me my friends for taking you out of the safe and comfortable divine paradise and throwing you into the natural and disorderly jungle of life for a constant struggle for your destiny.

Dodi Goldman is the science reporter for the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The article was published in the February issue of the magazine "Odysseus"