Word: darwinian
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...student at London University in 1884. There he came under the lasting influence of Darwin's disciple, T.E. Huxley. It is not hard to imagine how Wells would be impressed by a theory that made the monkey the common ancestor of kings and cockneys. He was soon mixing Darwinian science and the social philosophy of Herbert Spencer in articles and stories that found ready outlets in Grub Street periodicals...
...method: shrewd conclusion based on empirical observation. What the eyes could see, the wits could solve. At the zenith of the Darwinian revolution, Oliver Wendell Holmes assured his countrymen: "Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper-chamber, if he has common-sense on the ground floor...
...years ago, Novelist Duffy (Wounds, The Paradox Players) contributed an essay about the sad post-Darwinian view of animals (as failed, and therefore negligible, members of the tree of life) to a book called Animals, Men and Morals. An ultra-worthy anthology, which goes way beyond anti-blood-sport rhetoric, Animals (Taplinger; $6.50) has been widely unread. Much of its message has been palatably repackaged as a sugar-coated pill in All Heaven in a Rage. Whether the public will lick off the sugar and leave the pill behind is a question. Timothy Foote
...years in the virus' protein coat. But how to anticipate nature? That would require capturing all the Hong Kong derivative strains now available, growing them in the laboratory and attacking them with different types of antibody. Most would be neutralized, but in this artificial equivalent of the Darwinian process of natural selection, a few mutant strains would survive because their protein coat patterns differ from those of earlier strains. If, as is almost certain, the survivors share a certain characteristic-what virologists call a common antigen-it should be possible to make a vaccine which would protect against that...
...loved was her father. Her problem is neurotic, but Zindel warps it into cultural dimensions it doesn't deserve. When her brother-in-law refuses to lend her the capital she needs to open up a tea shop and "get back on the map," Zindel would like to brand Darwinian America as the villain, but in spite of himself all the dramatic evidence points to Beatrice herself. She pits a tough exterior against ghetto inertia, but Zindel is noncommital about the reasons for her vulnerability. She does deserve some sympathy, but his drooling pathos has taken the bite...