Perhaps the best place to start answering that question is here, at the American Museum of Natural History. An exhibition titled Darwin, opening Nov. 19, guides visitors through the life, and thoughts, of the famed naturalist considered the father of evolution, the theory that all living things have evolved from earlier forms of life. (Related item: Photo gallery: Darwin's evolution)
"Darwin himself was a really fascinating person, an adventurer as well as a scientist," says Michael Novacek, the museum's science provost. And finally, his theory had an enormous impact on society as well as science."
The exhibit starts with Darwin's 1831-1836 voyage to exotic lands aboard the HMS Beagle, when he observed and collected flowers, plants and animals, then moves on to the quiet half of his life. Living reclusively with his large family in the English countryside, Darwin waited decades to unveil his 1859 masterwork, On the Origin of Species, which first described his theory of natural selection. This central tenet of evolution holds that creatures well-equipped to survive and reproduce pass those traits on to their offspring, which out-reproduce less-advantaged creatures.
Museum curator Niles Eldredge says it's a coincidence that the Darwin exhibit, three years in the planning, is taking place at a time when evolution is once again at the center of public debate.
Arguments ended Friday in a highly publicized Pennsylvania trial. Now a judge will determine whether a school district has the right to teach intelligent design, which holds that some features of life result from an intelligent force, not natural selection. On Tuesday, the Kansas state Board of Education plans to vote on new academic standards that some educators say would encourage the teaching of intelligent design.
Creationism, the belief that mankind developed as told in the Bible, is also the subject of museum exhibits. And The Creation Museum, a $25 million, 50,000-square-foot center expected to be the largest of its kind, is under construction near Cincinnati and set to open in 2007.
But independent of the controversy, Darwin appears to be enjoying a renaissance. In addition to the exhibit, new books take a fresh look at his work.
"Darwin was a scientist who captured the public's attention, a very interesting character," says Gerald Wheeler of the National Science Teachers Association. Like Albert Einstein's work, Wheeler adds, Darwin's ideas have sometimes been overshadowed by his public image, that of a gray-bearded sage peering out from book covers.
The New York exhibit aims to show Darwin in his time, a Victorian who initially believed in a creationist theory, Eldredge says.
Abandoning student life to become the young naturalist aboard the Beagle, Darwin visited South America, Tahiti, Australia and, most famously, the Galapagos islands.
A display of tortoise shells, for example, different in ways both large and small from four nearby islands, represents the kind of riddle that nature posed to Darwin. Other displays include fossils and live Galapagos tortoises, iguana and frogs like the ones seen by Darwin.
The exhibit then turns to Down House outside Victorian London, the farmhouse where Darwin did most of his writing after 1842, where he studied pigeons and took daily walks to think through his ideas. Darwin's study, with items such as his microscope, is re-created. He was sickly and "became a recluse," Eldredge says.
(Darwin may have been ill, but he certainly kept busy. A recent report in the journal Nature said he wrote 7,591 letters to colleagues and received 6,530 in his time.)
Also on display is "Annie's Box," a collection of mementos from Darwin's cherished daughter, who died at age 10 after an illness. Darwin's religious faith died with her, and he was an agnostic when he died in 1882, says biographer James Moore.
From Down House, Darwin released the salvos — dozens of books, letters and other correspondence — that forever changed the field of biology. Drawing on his vast knowledge about species, he propounded his explanation of the variety found in the natural world, including a view of human origins through natural selection that researchers mapping the genetic structure of chimpanzees confirmed in August.
Orchids, a great interest of Darwin's, appear at the end of the exhibit. After proposing natural selection, he looked at these flowers and predicted the existence of a then-unknown insect that fed on a Madagascar orchid whose foot-deep well kept nectar out of reach of all known butterflies and moths.
His forecast — borne out by the discovery of the long-nosed Predicta moth, named in honor of the prediction — shows the power of his theory, Moore says.
A prolific author, Darwin doubtless would enjoy the acreage of books discussing his ideas today.
"He was above all an observer of life — that's how I see Darwin," says Harvard's Edward O. Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and naturalist. His Darwin book, From So Simple A Beginning ($39.95, W.W. Norton), is released on Monday.
"I saw it as a splendid opportunity to trace his intellectual development, starting with the voyage aboard the Beagle," Wilson says. "He hit upon natural selection at a fairly early stage and his life was really one long argument about the questions it raised."
Joining the Darwin book parade is Darwin, The Indelible Stamp: The Evolution of an Idea ($29.95, Running Press), released in September, in which Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA, presents Darwin's four major works with introductory essays.
Books about Darwin are, of course, nothing new, says science communications expert Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell University. "There is something referred to as the 'Darwin industry' in science."
And exhibits rarely change anyone's mind about science, he adds. But they are important as cultural statements. "Museums are a major component of how we transmit values as a society."
Such a goal — moving a concept valued by scientists into the mainstream — is the aim of another new book tackling Darwin, The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma (Yale University Press, $30) by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, published in October. The authors aim to update Darwin's theories with advances in genetic research that answer questions left unresolved in the original material.
"A whole other piece of the story has come together only in the past 10 years," says Kirschner, a biologist at Harvard Medical School. The biochemical and genetic processes that allow a fertilized egg to develop into a full-fledged creature also explain how new organs, eyes, flippers or fins readily evolve — a puzzle until recently, Kirschner says.
As a complement to the museum exhibit, Eldredge also has written a book, Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life ($35, W.W. Norton). In it, he looks at Darwin's notes from a scientist's perspective. Eldredge is well-known in scientific circles for his work on "punctuated equilibrium," which views evolution as episodic rather than a continuous process, an idea developed with the late biologist and author Stephen Jay Gould.
"The doubts about Darwin's theory are very much like the doubts heard 150 years ago," Novacek says. "The show is not about the controversy but about Darwin's life and adventures."
When the exhibit ends its run in May, curators expect it to travel to other natural-history museums.
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For more information on the Darwin exhibit, visit
www.amnh.org • Sites that list creationist museums include
ww.nwcreation.net/museums.html.
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