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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/nyregion/07darwin.html
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An Evolutionist's Evolution
By GLENN COLLINS
Published: November 7, 2005
It may seem that the American Museum of Natural History is cruising for
controversy in presenting "Darwin," the most comprehensive exhibition any
museum has offered on the naturalist's life and theories. It is a time,
after all, when the theory of evolution by natural selection seems as
newsworthy as it was back in the days of the Scopes trial 80 years ago.

According to a CBS News poll last month, 51 percent of Americans reject the
theory of evolution, saying that God created humans in their present form.
And reflecting a longstanding sentiment, 38 percent of Americans believe
that creationism should be taught instead of evolution, according to an
August poll by the Pew Research Center in Washington.

An ongoing federal trial in Harrisburg, Pa., may determine whether a local
school board can compel teachers to inform students about the theory of
intelligent design - the idea that life on earth is too complex to have
arisen through evolution alone. And though there is no credible scientific
support for this position, President Bush, when asked in August about
evolution and intelligent design, said that "both sides ought to be properly
taught."

However, said Ellen V. Futter, president of the museum, the $3 million
exhibition, which opens to the public on Nov. 19, was conceived three years
ago and "is not a riposte, but a celebration of Darwin's life and his ideas,
which are the cornerstone of modern biology." The exhibition illustrates the
way in which evolution became the basis for modern biology, ranking its
importance with the theories of relativity in physics, and plate tectonics
in geology.

"Since Darwin's life is an adventure story that reflects the scientific
process," Dr. Futter added, "the show is a cerebral and physical
exploration, an attempt to humanize science through an understanding of
Darwin's life."

The exhibition will consist of more than 400 artifacts, specimens and
documents, including at least 100 lent manuscripts and other objects, 159
models fabricated by the museum's workshops, 74 specimens from the museum's
collections and nine live animals. Though created and designed at the
museum, the show received conceptual advice and financial assistance from
four institutions that will present the exhibition after it closes in New
York on May 29: the Museum of Science in Boston, the Field Museum in
Chicago, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the Natural History Museum
in London.

"We see the exhibition as an important part of our Darwin bicentennial,"
said Robert M. Bloomfield, head of special projects at the Natural History
Museum in London. The show will arrive there in late 2008, "a harbinger of
our celebrations," Dr. Bloomfield said, referring to elaborate plans to mark
the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth in 2009, which is also the 150th
anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking book "On the Origin of
Species."

Michael J. Novacek, senior vice president and provost of the American Museum
of Natural History, said that "our hope is to make it emphatically clear
just how important Darwin's work is to modern science, and to what we and
other scientists do in everyday life."

Referring to the museum's curatorial, research and academic faculty of 200
scientists, "the work of most of them is essentially based on Darwin's
work," Dr. Novacek said. None of the staffers believe in intelligent design
"or at least they haven't declared it," he said. "Nothing in biology makes
sense except in the light of evolution."

He added, "Some of the current reactions to Darwin's work are the same as
they were when 'Origin' was first published."

The exhibition mentions intelligent design not as science, or as a theory to
be debated, but as a form of creationism, which offers the biblical view
that God created the earth and its creatures fully formed within the last
10,000 years. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that creationism is a
religious belief that cannot be taught in public schools.

Dr. Novacek said that "we are welcoming everyone to the show," adding that
"we will be prepared to respond to questions." The museum's docents and
public-education staff are being trained on how to respond to challenges to
the exhibition.

Niles Eldredge, the exhibition's curator, said, "We might change some
minds." But Dr. Novacek added: "We respect people's beliefs, and conversion
is not necessarily our goal. We hope that every visitor will have a clearer
idea of what Darwin did and, for that matter, what science means."

The show was envisioned as the next in the museum's series on thinkers,
explorers and scientists, following its exhibitions on Leonardo da Vinci,
Ernest Shackleton and Albert Einstein. The 6,000-square-foot Darwin
exhibition has been assembled not only from the museum's collections but
also from those of Cambridge University, the Darwin family and Down House,
where the naturalist spent the last 40 years of his life.

The exhibition is presented as a chronological journey to South America and
the Galápagos Islands and as an internal journey that changed the way Darwin
viewed the world and himself. "We'd like visitors to follow Darwin's life,
to see what he saw, and understand how he came to his ideas," Dr. Eldredge
said.

The exhibition "has the crown jewels," Dr. Novacek said, referring to
Darwin's original specimens, manuscripts and notes. "Many of these haven't
been together since they were on the H.M.S. Beagle," he said, referring to
the 90-foot ship that carried Darwin on a voyage from 1831 to 1836 to South
America and the Galápagos, an isolated chain of volcanic islands off the
west coast of South America.

Visitors who approach the exhibition through the Hall of Reptiles and
Amphibians will come across two live 13-year-old, 50-pound specimens of
Geochelone nigra, the Galápagos tortoise that offered Darwin clues for his
evolutionary theory. Later in the gallery, they will discover a
five-foot-long live green iguana and a terrarium housing six live
Ceratophrys ornata, horned toads.

Inside, the very first exhibit is the magnifying glass that Darwin used to
examine his specimens.

The show will offer an overview of human evolution through the rich fossil
record. It will also demonstrate how Darwin's work gave rise to modern
biology with cutting-edge displays on genomic research, DNA research and
evidence of the latest scientific update of the taxonomic tree of life.

Dr. Eldredge has been an important participant in this work. In the 1970's
he and Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard University paleontologist who died in
2002, developed the theory of punctuated equilibria in evolution: the notion
that transitions in species take place periodically - during intense periods
of activity - and not necessarily as part of a steady, gradual process.

On display will be a rare manuscript page from "Origin," one of just a few
known to exist. (Fun fact: Darwin never used the word "evolution" in the
first edition, though the book's last word is "evolved.")

Also on view will be some of Darwin's most famous notebooks, written from
1837 to 1839, especially Page 36 in Notebook B, where he sketched the
world's first evolutionary tree of life. "That's the equivalent of seeing
E=mc2 in Einstein's papers," Dr. Eldredge said.

Also on display is the original text from Notebook D that shows the eureka
moment when Darwin first described natural selection.

From the Beagle voyage, the exhibition offers Darwin's original pistol, his
telescope and his Bible. There are also 33 of the beetles, butterflies,
moths and flies Darwin collected, and his rock hammer, used on geological
excursions.

In one exhibition, area visitors will see a five-foot-tall reproduction of a
famous geological outcrop, the Hutton Unconformity in Scotland, which has an
80-million-year gap in its rock record. This helped demonstrate to Darwin
that the earth was much older than the 6,000 years posited by many
creationists.

The museum also offers a meticulous recreation of the room at Down House
where he wrote "Origin," presenting Darwin's original cane, work table and
specimen boxes.

The significance of Darwin's ideas "has grown," Dr. Bloomfield said. "For
example, at this moment we're looking at Asian bird flu and where it's
going. If not for Darwinism, we would be ignorant of the mechanism of that
flu, and how it changes over time."

Museum site: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/?src=h_h

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