Friday, January 16, 2009

Charlie is my Darwin

Over on ScienceBlogs, a fellow by the name of John Whitfield has taken on the task of "blogging" Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species:

Blogging the Origin (ScienceBlogs)

I don't especially want this site to become a debate of evolution, but regardless of your views on the subject, the Origin is still worthwhile reading, and of great relevance to the actual purpose of this site. It's a study of genetics before there really was much in the way of a field of genetics, and ultimately, it's a study of variation in living organisms--and variation is at the very core of fruit breeding. Darwin doesn't always get it his individual points right, but the man had an amazing eye for variation in nature.

(Darwin dealt more specifically with matters of domestication in a later work, and actually wrote an entire book on inbreeding, an important concept in plant breeding.)

I really like the idea of "blogging" books (Lady Evil Fruit absolutely loved Slate.com's Blogging the Bible) and I'd do it here except I'm too lazy and I don't have a particular book in mind...