Nick Cohen: Darwin's no help on the origins of greed

The posters outside the Natural History museum's Darwin exhibition have a wary feel. They show the old boy shushing at the passers-by with a forefinger over his lips and a worried look in his eyes. Inside, the curators explain how he sat on his theory of evolution for fear of its social consequences with the help of a letter he wrote to his friend, Joseph Hooker. In 1844, 15 years before he found the courage to publish On the Origin of Species, he said: 'I am almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.'Henry Kissinger is meant to have come up with the witticism that 'academic politics are so bitter because the stakes are so low'. Many contest his claim on the line, but if it was his he was as wrong about intellectual life as about so much else. The stakes in the academic...

Read the whole article on The Guardian - Science

More from The Guardian - Science

Related