Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
Topic

Charles Lyell

Charles Darwin, caricatured in Vanity Fair. Date: 1871
Image: Charles Darwin caricatured in Vanity Fair. Date: 1871

Darwin’s Category Errors and Their Consequences

Charles Darwin indiscriminately lumped together the organic and inorganic spheres — a grand category error. Read More ›
swimmer
Photo credit: Brian Matangelo via Unsplash.

On the Miracles of Physiological Design

The book under review is a splendid and uniquely well-informed contribution to the debate about what is by all indices a theory in possibly terminal crisis. Read More ›
Thomas Malthus
Image: Thomas Malthus, by John Linnell [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Old Wine in New Bottles: How Darwin Recruited Malthus to Fortify a Failed Idea from Antiquity

It was undoubtedly a tremendous philosophical coup for Darwin whose knowledge of formal philosophy was limited. Read More ›
roulette wheel
Photo credit: John Wardell, via Flickr (cropped).

The Art of Concealment: Darwin and Chance

It is appropriate that Fortuna’s emblematic representation with her ubiquitous wheel should have gone on to become the prototype of the modern roulette wheel. Read More ›
Charles Darwin statue Shrewsbury
Charles Darwin statue Shrewsbury
Photo: Statue of Charles Darwin, Shrewsbury Library, by Bs0u10e01 / CC BY-SA.

Darwin, Lyell, and a Tale of Two Faiths

Darwin found himself in the unhappy position of having his faith undermined by what he saw as the non-directed processes of geological and biological evolution. Read More ›
Bust of Rudolf Bultmann
Photo: Bust of Rudolf Bultmann, by Dbleicher (Diskussion), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Darwin, Lyell, and Demythologization

The term demythologization is today most frequently associated with the mid 20th-century German theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Read More ›
midwife toad
Photo: A midwife toad, via Wikimedia Commons.

Darwin and the Ghost of Lamarck

The lure of Lamarck was exemplified most strikingly in the case of Viennese biologist Paul Kammerer and the unhappy affair of the “midwife toad.” Read More ›
Samuel Haughton
Photo: Samuel Haughton, via Wikimedia Commons.

Meet Samuel Haughton, Darwin’s First Scientific Critic

Darwin reports Haughton’s verdict as having been that “all that was new in there was false, and what was true was old.” Read More ›
Photo: Sir Charles Lyell, via Wikimedia Commons.

Was Darwinian Theory Based on a False Analogy to Geology?

Given the degree of discipleship for Sir Charles, Darwin fully expected to receive Lyell’s commendation for his labors. Read More ›
Lyell_1840
Image: Charles Lyell in 1840, by Alexander Craig, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Outlining Intelligent Design’s Positive Argument

To borrow geologist Charles Lyell’s words, intelligent agency is a cause “now in operation” that can be studied in the world around us. Read More ›

© Discovery Institute