Science Illustrated

Darwin’s revolution in thought

God created the heavens and the Earth some 6000 years ago. He filled the planet with plants and animals, and finally he created man and woman. All existing species descend from the animals that survived God’s flood aboard Noah’s Ark.

That is Genesis in a nutshell: the Bible’s tale of the evolution of species, which most people believed in the early 1800s. It’s hard to imagine today how radical it was when the British scientist Charles Darwin rejected the word of the Bible in his epoch-making

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Science Illustrated

Science Illustrated5 min read
New calculation: FIVE WAYS TO END THE UNIVERSE
How will the universe end? Scientific questions don’t get much more fundamental than this – and yet we don’t know the answer. Or more precisely, we have a number of answers, with the correct one depending on which cosmological theory proves to be tru
Science Illustrated2 min read
ChatGPT Predicts Fights Between Animal Species
NATURE The circuses of Ancient Rome saw some bizarre animal battles: rhino versus hippo, crocodile versus bear, as well as human gladiators against crocodiles, elephants and, in one case, an ostrich. Happily modern science can stage similar clashes i
Science Illustrated2 min read
…flies Always Die On Their Backs?
ENTYMOLOGY You may often find dead flies on their backs, but they do not necessarily die that way. Instead, this common death posture is because flies – and many other insects – are relatively light, and crucially their centre of gravity is at the to

Related Books & Audiobooks