Transcript of the Darwin at Downe video clip
Down house and the country around it, to biology, I don’t know what it is, its like Stonehenge, the Parthenon.
It’s a place of pilgrimage, it’s really where it all began. And it isn’t just because Darwin lived here, much more important he worked here. He developed his theories here. He did many, many experiments here, he wrote the origin of species here, he founded the science of ecology in this very garden.
We hear about the rainforests, we hear about the coral reefs, and its worth remembering, it all began at Downe.
Charles Darwin’s science is of such importance because his theory of evolution by natural selection, and his argument of human origins, are fundamental to the scientific understanding of the modern world.
No other comparable set of insights in recent history have had such pervasive influence on human thinking. On philosophy, the creative arts, and the need for action to ensure sustainable development on our overcrowded planet. So lets go to Downe Bank, now a nature reserve…
‘It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us….’
And this is the entangled bank.
And this is the very last line –
'This planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved’
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Darwin at Downe