2009 is the year of Darwin. Charles Darwin was born February 12, 1809, in Shrewsbury, England, making this the 200th anniversary of his birth. November 24, 2009, marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin's famous book about evolutionary theory.

Science News celebrated the year with a special January issue, entitled "Evolution at Darwin's Bicentennial." The February National Geographic offered a forty-page section on Darwin, and Science magazine reviewed his theory of natural selection, with a focus on how his work led him to develop evolutionary theory (January 9, 2009). The New York Times has added an interactive Darwin section to its website's science page, which can be accessed from The New York Times.

In July the University of Cambridge, England, hosted a four-day Darwin Festival with lectures and seminars. This meeting featured outstanding scientists from around the world, engaged in conversations about how evolutionary theory shaped the discussion of biologists in Darwin's time and an increasing number of scientists now. Scientific fields of study that did not exist during Darwin's lifetime now rely on evolutionary theory to guide their thinking and research. The Festival website offers podcasts, interviews and photos from the event.

Darwin and Bowen Theory

When I entered the Special Postgraduate Program at the Georgetown Family Center in 1981, Murray Bowen was intensifying his focus on science. Looking at the students sitting in front of him, his voice, raspy and strained from recent surgery, filled the room with rapid-fire challenges: "What is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning?" "What is science?" "Describe the scientific method." "Explain evolutionary theory." "How do you know what you know?" "Have you read Darwin?"

That last question stunned me. I had undertaken the journey to Washington, D.C., to learn to be a family therapist. Now I was being questioned because I had not read Darwin. I had only read about Darwin. Dr. Bowen was adamant, "You must read the original source." Later in the program he challenged us to read Freud, following the same logic as he did with Darwin, and, I was to learn, as he did with all things. Go back to the original source.

So I returned home, went to the bookstore and bought a used paperback copy of The Origin of Species. It didn't take many pages to get me hooked. Reading Darwin was a window into how Darwin thought and solved problems. He was really telling a story about himself and his thirty-year quest for the origin of species. It was as if Darwin were inviting me into his head to see how he followed the clues and ideas he used to spell out that origin.

His quest was guided by questions he asked all the time about everything. Darwin searched everywhere for answers. He wrote hundreds of letters to pigeon keepers, farmers, biologists and geologists, asking questions and telling them what he was doing. For eight years he dissected barnacles in his study at home. He laid out experimental garden plots along his daily walking path and watched the struggle for survival there. He put seeds in bottles of salt water and set them on his mantle, leaving them to soak for different periods of time and then planting them to see if they would germinate. He found seeds in bird feces and planted them to test if birds could carry plants from island to island in their fecal matter.

I believe that the time I spent reading Origin made me a better thinker and observer. I went on to read some of Darwin's other writings, which cover a vast number of subjects and include an autobiography and several notebooks, along with scores of letters, articles and booklets. His The Voyage of the Beagle, published in 1838, is a compelling travelogue, detailing his five-year journey on the HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist.

Interactive Darwin

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online can be found at www.darwin-online.org.uk. This website began in 2002 as an attempt to assemble, in one scholarly website, all Darwin's published writings and unpublished papers. The site contains over 81,000 pages of searchable text and 194,000 images. Some of my favorite items include the travel itinerary of the voyage of the Beagle and links to files of Darwin's works that can be downloaded to an mp3 player. The Bookshelf section looks like a shelf showing the spines of all of Darwin's books, complete with original covers. Visitors may click on the book they want to read and the book slides off the shelf and opens up before them.

The New York Times Science site, noted above, is another easy and approachable way to begin to read Darwin. This interactive site features a searchable, user-friendly PDF version of Origin with comments from evolutionary biologists and historians of science about their favorite sections. Also included are articles about what modern science has added to evolutionary theory. The site acknowledges that few people have read the original text of Darwin's writings and suggests that, even at 150 years old, the text can offer "surprises, insights and pleasures."

The comments of Dr. Frans de Waal on Chapter III, "The Struggle for Existence," address Darwin's use of the term "struggle for existence" in a large and metaphorical sense. De Waal discusses how Darwin avoids the simplifications of many contemporary popularizers of evolutionary biology about the struggle for existence. Darwin, he says, moved beyond the idea of "might makes right" and the strong surviving to recognize struggle beyond the physical sense. Darwin observed that "some animals survive through cooperation, depending on one another, and that others survive simply by being better at finding food, fighting off diseases, or withstanding the cold or dryness of their climate." (72)

Attached to Chapter X, "On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings," are Carl Zimmer's comments on Darwin's use of a tree to illustrate the splitting of species into separate lineages. Zimmer, who wrote, "Scientists Crunch the Data To Build a Usable Tree of Life" (The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2009), writes that Darwin drew the first evolutionary tree when he was 28 and had just returned from his voyage aboard the Beagle. This tree has become an oft-used, easy to understand way to show how species separated into different forms.

Final Thoughts

Bowen believed that the study of human behavior should be rooted in science and built Bowen theory on established scientific principles, using terms from science and recognizing man as a part of nature. He read extensively. He researched and studied human behavior, testing out his concepts and building a theory rooted in the family emotional process. One of his guiding principles was that students of the theory needed to read and understand science. Darwin was on Bowen's "must read" list.

Bowen warned of availing ourselves of diluted information filtered through the head of another and then acting as if we knew what the original source really said. He challenged us not to do this with science, his theory or with our mothers. As we celebrate these two anniversaries, there are many ways to get to know Darwin through his original writings.

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Science Friday

National Public Radio airs Science Friday, a weekly science, technology and environment news program, hosted by Ira Flatow. Recent subjects discussed by Flatow, his guests and the radio audience include wave energy as a renewable resource, new fossil finds that challenge the hominid family tree, and the farm bill. These segments, available on podcasts, are a great way to learn about new developments in science and technology and feature ongoing environment segments. The Science Friday Blog offers an opportunity to see what others are saying about topics of interest. During live shows listeners can call in or email questions.

The website offers links for teachers, educators' guides and a kids' connection. For a list of the stations carrying The Talk of the Nation Science Friday, click here.