Absolutely agree. Both men are insurmountable in respect to their achievements.
CD is more relevant in more aspects.
In my opinion science is predestined. Assuming evolution is true, it would have been discovered and eventually accepted as such. Today, 150 years after the fact, I don’t think scientific understanding would be much different had it been Wallace instead of Darwin. Evolutions time had come. 100 years ago the world may have been very different had it been Wallace instead of Darwin, but as time goes on the impact of which one it was lessens.
All I need to do is look at how GHWB and GWB handled the gulf situation to know how vastly different the world looks when you change the guy in charge. And they had a pretty similar supporting cast.
In time, the difference between Lincoln and someone else will be less and less. But at least for now I have to give the nod to Lincoln.
I thought they published together.
Why does evolution matter in everyday life? It matters inasmuch as science, and therefore medicine, matter.
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” – Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973
Quoted for truth, as the theory of evolution (a theory in the same way as the theory of gravitation) underlies modern biological science, upon which medical research relies, and our understanding of the natural world. To cite a popular example, understanding evolution by natural selection allows us to understand and therefore combat bacterial resistance to antibiotics (and resistance to antiparasitics and antivirals).
As an example, rifampin is a powerful antibiotic that works well against diseases such as TB. However, given alone, resistance rapidly evolves and rifampin becomes useless. When given in combination with other drugs, resistance to either drug is much less likely than if you gave them one at a time.
To go in another direction, evolutionary theory combined with molecular techniques allows us to construct phylogenies and analyze similarities and differences between species. We can use model organisms to study everything from the basic cellular machinery to effects of drugs to spread of disease because we understand on at least a basic level that bacteria, flatworms, flies, and mice all share properties with humans, and so discoveries in “lower” organisms can be used to benefit humankind. How confident could we be of neuroscience studies if we did not know, for example, that mice and humans share a recent enough ancestor that we share most of the same neurotransmitters and receptors in our brains? What about discoveries about the cell cycle, a topic crucial to the understanding of cancer, which have been made in yeast?
I am babbling a little here and probably not stating my case very well, but I truly believe what Dobzhansky said. Everything in biological science comes back in some way to the theory of evolution by natural selection. It provides a unifying thread that allows us to understand what we see and make predictions based on this understanding.
To get back to the OP, as you might have guessed, I’m going to go with Darwin.
This is entirely tangential to the thread, but specifically relates to both the above and the anniversary.
When I wrote the comment above I had in mind Darwin’s letter of 1/5/1857 to Wallace, which mentions that he is preparing his book on speciation for publication. Discovered today that this very letter is currently on public display in the little temporary Darwin exhibition in the lobby of the British Library. If you are in the vicinity, the exhibition is worth checking out.
There’s also another way in which Darwin was influential. He was part of the instigation of the revolution that took science from being a hobby, of pastors and rich men, into a profession.
The idea of being a “professional scientist” to the Victorians was slightly scandalous—it wasn’t something that well-bred men did. Yet, a new generation of young men was appearing who wished to turn science into a profession, in its own right.
The Huxley-Wilberforce debate was part of this. It really wasn’t a debate over science and religion: Wilberforce himself was a noted scientist, despite being Bishop of Oxford, and many of the objections brought up in the debate were purely scientific (nobody could yet pinpoint a means by which traits were passed from one generation to the other, until genetics was developed, for instance). In particular, here’s a snippet from Wilberforce’s own review of On the Origin of the Species:
The legend of the debate states that Wilberforce was crushed by the evolutionists. Yet this wasn’t the case, and both sides could probably have called the debate a draw. Rather, the evolutionists took the chance to score a propaganda coup, and portray Wilberforce as a buffoon, in the hopes of carving out a niche in Victorian society for themselves, as professionals. What could be better than demonstrating that the very latest thinking on the natural world was now too complex for a noted hobbyist to grasp?
(I’ve mentioned this book before, but Fabulous Science has a lot more on this, and describes the struggle to make science into a respectable profession. It’s a great read, if you’re into science, and a bit contrary.)
If one has the belief that Lincoln possibly saved democracy–“that government : of the people, by the people, for the people, [did] not perish from the earth”–then Lincoln had a greater impact than Darwin by far. It is not an unreasonable belief but it is highly speculative.
If one’s influence is measured in the number of biographies then Abe wins by that scale, too. I’ve read that Lincoln has been written about more than any human after Jesus.
Doesn’t that imply that democracy had to have been by then a purely American concept?
–one would be mistaken.
Darwin wins this, hands down. The only reason to say different is misguided patriotism.
What’s the argument that Lincoln saved democracy? How is that even justified?
No, any more than evolution was purely a Darwin concept.
In 1860 the US was still the only democratic nation in that all politicians in Federal officer were elected in some form by citizens. Britain was moving in that direction and it’s probable that her path would have remained unchanged regardless of Lincoln’s action. However, if the South had won it’s independence then it’s possible democratic movements in other countries would have slowed or reversed. The US Federal experiment might have died as more states broke away, Balkanizing what had been a (mostly) peaceful democratic government.
British subjects were aware of this (I believe Burns discusses this in his documentary.) Lincoln certainly believed this and expressed it in his Gettysburg Address: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
Then how did Lincoln save it seeing as though in large parts of the world it wasn’t in danger? In fact many countries had slowly moved to democracy from more oppressive regimes without any help from Lincoln at all, starting from before Lincoln was even born.
Frankly the idea that Lincoln in some way saved the concept of democracy is preposterous and patently indefensible.
There’s a mighty big jump from that vague and debatable if … possible to the idea that Lincoln in some way saved democracy.
As someone else said, purely misguided patriotism. I also wouldn’t put too much into that Gettysburg Address quote. Lincoln’s job was to make such things sound more important than they were so as to spur people on.
Darwin dealt God a mortal wound by blowing giant holes in the Bible and it makes little or no difference to the rest of the world who won your civil war.
I echo the previous sentiments that only a USA-centric board could even consider this a question for debate.
Darwin. Clearly.
How is that a blow for democracy, since the new Southern Confederacy was also a democracy, closely modeled on the old one? Balkanisation may be a blow for peace, but surely it’s only a blow for democracy if it replaces the old order with non-democratic states?
No, I guess not - democracy is kind of dependent on peaceful transitions of power. But on the third hand, the strong state’s rights tradition in the US made this sort of conflict inherent, I guess. Aaah, I dunno…
The line of US Govts that descended from Lincoln spent the next 130+ years stamping out or otherwise undermining democratic movements wherever they raised their ugly little heads whilst installing or propping up monstrous dictators. So no.
No, it wasn’t. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was. You also had the Maori Wars around the same time, and the Indian Mutiny (1857); which was, in fact, partly sparked by the issue of the Enfield Pattern 1853 Rifled Musket and some brouhaha about the lubrication of the cartridge used with the rifle.
In short the British had been involved in three major conflicts which involved the general issue of a rifle (the Enfield rifled musket) before the US Civil War.
I agree completely; Lincoln’s influence does not spread far outside the US (and he’s best remembered for Freeing The Slaves, overlooking the fact that slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire in 1834 and the North had been Abolitionist for some time as well). The South wasn’t going to win the Civil War in any scenario except a Harry Turtledove novel, and even if they had they’d be so heavily in debt to the British that they’d have to end slavery anyway unless they wanted to become Confederate British North America.
Darwin, on the other hand, completely changed the way we look at ourselves, our world, our Faith, and our relationship between those factors. It’s no contest and it’s such a foregone conclusion, IMHO, I’d be very surprised if William Hill would even be prepared to offer odds on it.
I’ll roll my thoughts into one response…
By 1860 there were still only two major, modern, experiments in democratic government–the US and French Revolutions–and at least one minor attempt in Haiti. Other than the US the other attempts had failed, the French one gruesomely so. When Lincoln took the public oath the only surviving democracy was teetering on the brink of failure. If a democratic nation was allowed to break apart over differences then it might not ever succeed–not long after the Confederates declared their independence South Carolina was threatening to secede again.
What happens then? Does New England, which had threatened to secede 50 years earlier, make good on that promise? Do the states fall apart, create armies, and re-ignite interstate skirmishes? Does the American experiment fail? With nothing but failed democracies, does Europe create the French Third Republic?
Today we take for granted that democratic governance is the natural culmination of an enlightened society. Without Lincoln it might be otherwise.
Still a lot of mighty big mights kicking around and ignoring of the slow move towards democracy that Europe had been doing for centuries. As an example, arguably England’s first elected Parliament was in 1264. About half a mile from where I grew up is a place called “Parliament Piece” that, legend has it, was one of the sites used by Henry III’s Parliament in 1266.
That was the birth of democracy in England and from that point onwards there was a slow move to where we are today and you’ll probably find that the same thing happened in a lot of other European countries. You make it sound as if democracy happened overnight in the late seventeenth century and was hanging on for dear life. That’s quite simply not in the slightest bit true and seeing as it is the crux of your argument then frankly your argument falls apart.
Wrong. What was Britain? With or without the ‘example’ of the USA other liberal democracies would have continued building towards universal suffrage.
Even if we shade over the fact that in large parts of the USA blacks were effectively disenfranchised until late in the 20th century many countries achieved universal suffrage before the USA including the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Australia etc etc.
Lincoln may have been an important figure for the USA but no matter how you parse history and ignore inconvenient facts (such as the monumentally anti-democratic foreign policies of US govts) he is simply unimportant beyond your borders.
Certainly compared to Darwin, or indeed many, many other people.