Evolution Evolves

Photo courtesy Ben Fry, The Preservation of Favoured Traces

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Thanks to SEED for shining the light on this gigacool visualization showing evolution evolve.

That is, for illuminating the exploration of scientific thought as expressed in the many edits and revisions of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

First published in 1859, Darwin’s Origin has since become the unifying concept of the life sciences.

Ben Fry, director of Seed Visualization and the Phyllotaxis Lab, has released this new tool, The Preservation of Favoured Traces, allowing us to watch the book evolve through six editions as Darwin reconsidered his arguments and responded to criticisms… including from his ultra pious wife, Emma, who may have been the reason he delayed publishing for 21 years.

Launch Fry’s visualization to see how scientific theories are not static truths but living ideas likewise perpetually evolving under the selection pressures of new evidence.

Suggestion: run the visualization in the Fast mode… 150 years on and we’ve got about a tenth the attention span of Darwin’s orchid-gazing times.
 

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate