As students involved in the organization of the Darwin Week celebrations, we are surprised at Richard F. Horns’ suggestion (“Our Obsession with Darwin”, The Amherst Student, Feb. 18) that we were guilty of a “fixation on ‘Darwinism.’” We thought that Darwin Week would be a fun way to include the entire Amherst community in a celebration of science. We saw the occasion of Charles Darwin’s bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species” as a convenient time to celebrate an idea that is central to all of biology. We also used it as an opportunity to educate people not only about Darwin’s work, but also about our current understanding of evolution and the debates that surround it. For the record, we never referred to Darwinism at any point in the week. We made an effort to include scientific literature about our current understanding of evolution at all of our events, including discussions of the intelligent design debate, myths and facts about evolution and even an article entitled “Darwin was wrong.” Given our significant effort to talk about all of evolution and not just Darwin’s ideas, the accusation of an obsession with Darwin is unjustified.

It is unclear to whom Mr. Horns is referring when he discusses “our fixation.” If he is referring to the scientific community, then the premise of his argument is false — biologists are simply not obsessed with Darwin. If, and this occurs rarely, professional biologists refer to “Darwinism,” they mean “natural selection,” and are doing no more than giving Darwin credit for an idea that was undoubtedly his. Most biologists who work on evolution today use ideas and tools that have been developed after Darwin’s time, and it would be impossible for them, or anyone familiar with their work, to ignore the developments in biology that have been made since Darwin.

Given this, it does not seem excessive to celebrate the work of someone who was a scientist par excellence. As Horns himself points out, Darwin carefully read the work of scientists before him, developed a hypothesis about how living organisms evolve and then spent 20 years collecting evidence for his hypothesis. Horns fails to note that, in fact, Darwin co-authored the first paper written about natural selection with Alfred Russell Wallace, and far from “beat[ing] Wallace to the press,” gave him equal credit for the idea.

Much like a birthday celebrates a person’s life and not just his or her birth, celebrating a significant moment in the history of evolutionary thought in no way “ignores 150 years of discoveries.” We celebrate Darwin’s ideas today only because they have fuelled 150 years of scientific thought and research, and it would be impossible to celebrate Darwin without celebrating everything that he has influenced.

-Elizabeth Newman ’09

Mukta Dhond ’09

Ambika Kamath ’11