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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 17 Oct 2021

Taken: 17 Oct 2021

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Through the eyes of Darwin

Through the eyes of Darwin

Nouchetdu38, J.Garcia, Edna Edenkoben, Erhard Bernstein have particularly liked this photo

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Here is one example of how, while each perception seeks its meaning, the science and the spontaneity of his response to nature combine in what I would also call poetic insight. He writes of the “din of the rushing water” in a river in the Cordillers, and of hos the noise from the “the thousands and thousands” of stones, as they “rattled one over another” was heard night and day “along the whole course of the torrent” and “spoke eloquently to the geologist” as, with “one dull uniform sound,” they all hurried “in one direction). Here is a perfect example of the “double movement” of his prose, the moment what achieves its rational triumphs by evoking the wonder that makes the best argument against the idea that Darwin’s work implies a very bleak vision of the world:

It is not possible for the mind to comprehend, except by a slow process, any effect which is produced by a cause repeated so often, that the multipliers itself conveys an idea, not more definite than the savage implies when he points to the hairs of his head. As often as I have seen beds of mud, sand, and shingle, accumulated to the thickness of many thousand feet, I have felt inclined to exclaim that causes, such as the present rivers and the present beaches, could never have ground down and produced such masses. But on the other hand, what listening to the rattling noise of these torrents, and calling to mind that whole races of animal have passed away from the face of the earth, and during this whole period, night and day, these stone have gone rattling onwards in their course, I have thought to myself, can any mountains, any continents, withstand such waste? ~ Page 61
3 years ago.
 J.Garcia
J.Garcia club
Superb image and text
Many thanks, Dinesh
3 years ago. Edited 3 years ago.

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