Charles Darwin May Get Canceled At London Museum After Black Lives Matter Complaints
Exhibit under review regarding Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Islands called “one of Britain’s many ‘colonialist scientific expeditions.'”
The Black Lives Matters protests triggered a review of items and exhibits at London’s Natural History Museum, which includes one about Charles Darwin.
It turns out one curator labeled Darwin’s visit to the Galapagos Island “as one of Britain’s many ‘colonialist scientific expeditions.'”
The Telegraph received documents of the internal review:
Michael Dixon, the director of the Natural History Museum, explained to staff: “The Black Lives Matter movement has demonstrated that we need to do more and act faster, so as a first step we have commenced an institution-wide review on naming and recognition.”
He added: “We want to learn and educate ourselves, recognising that greater understanding and awareness on diversity and inclusion are essential.”
Yes, somehow Darwin’s visit to the island is considered problematic, even though it helped science and people to understand nature.
From The Telegraph:
An example of the new thinking to address perceived imperial connections to science was a paper penned by a curator and shared with staff, which claimed “science, racism, and colonial power were inherently entwined”.
The work further argues that “museums were put in place to legitimise a racist ideology”, that “covert racism exists in the gaps between the displays”, and as a result collections need to be decolonised.
The executive board of the museum is understood to be “very engaged with the many issues and questions it highlights”.
Legacies that may fall foul of the shift in opinion might be the exotic birds of Darwin and Captain Robert Fitzroy, as their shared journey to South American was “enable greater British control” of the region, according to the paper shared with staff.
The great naturalist Darwin also has a statue in the museum’s main hall, and a large wing named after him.
The museum will also examine Hintze Hall’s ceiling:
The painted ceiling contains visual depictions of plants “like cotton, tea and tobacco” which were “the plants that fuelled the British Empire’s economy”, according to the paper shared with staff in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.
The National History Museum also has a large collection of items from Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who “devised the Latin naming system of different species.”
But those names could come become problematic because Linnaeus viewed Africans as “indolent.” The Telegraph said his opinions on Africans could cause people to see that his naming system “as erasing indigenous terms for specimens then collected and renamed by European naturalists.”
Then there’s the statue of Thomas Henry Huxley, who is known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” since he advocated for Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Huxley is a controversial figure due to his racial theories. He listed the nine human races in four categories: Australioid, Negroid, Xanthochronic, and Mongoloid
[Featured image via YouTube]
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Ok, so something good might come out of this after all. The “theory” of molecules to man evolution, which is really just a hypothesis, is not backed by real science and never was (please note that I am not referring to natural/artificial selection).
It doesn’t take more than a couple days of research by any curious person to find that out either.
Evolutionary Creationism, yes. That quasi-scientific theory is based on pattern matching, brown matter, and a trail of missing links. However, evolution (e.g. life) as a process that is chaotic, as opposed to progressive (i.e. monotonic), less the anthropomorphic attributes attached to it by ostensibly “secular” zealots, is true as a matter of circumstance and scientific limits.
My main disagreement with Neo-Darwinism is that the theory is framed in a way that it can never be falsified. The evolution of one species into another is not directly observable through experimentation but instead relies on examining historical evidence (the fossil record).
The difficulty with that is interpretation of the fossil record depends heavily on what framework is being used. Evolutionists ASSUME evolution to be true and then interpret the evidence to then prove what they assumed in the first place. Anomalies (such as the existence of birds BEFORE so-called “feathered” dinosaurs, or the lack of transitional species) are explained away as the result of an incomplete fossil record. This may – or may not – be so, but it does tend to make Neo-Darwinism permanently safe from being falsified.
Charles Darwin was reluctant to publish the Origin of Species, because it would be misused and misunderstood. He was right, and here we have proof of both, yet again.
Not only do we have BLM whining over it, we have a poster, cktheman commenting about it without ever having read the book.
Did you ever read what Darwin wrote about blacks? Just like Margaret Sanger, the leftist educators and groups never mention that.
He was convinced that evolution was progressive, and that the white races—especially the Europeans—were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races, thus establishing race differences and a racial hierarchy.
We know the BLM people can’t or don’t read, ’cause if they really read Darwin…oh well.
Wait a minute, tea, cotton and tobacco fueled the economy of Britain? These folks definitely missed a few steps.
Opium was traded, illicitly to the Chinese, which was necessary because China would only accept silver in payment. So the BEIC exports to China were financed by trading opium, through intermediaries. West Indies yielded sugar, for the newly imported tea, and of course to make rum.
Cotton came from the U.S. until the the civil war era and the British began ‘encouraging’ cotton to be grown in Egypt as an alternative.
No question that the British empire was a mercantile system. As colonial overlords go, if one was given the choice the British were the way to go. Check the history of the Dutch, French, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese or Belgium. Not even close in terms of treatment to indigenous people. That isn’t to say the British were super nice fellows, own colonial experience and revolution shows they were not.
Ironic that the new “Black” movement and Antifa back one of the worst examples of politics the world has ever known. The British Empire is a piker compared to communism.
Both Hilter and Stalin were very active cancelling out science & scientists if the science came from the wrong person.
Hilter cancelled science if discovered by jews
Stalin if the science came from anti marxists – Lysenko pseudoscience was promoted because it was marxist
Does the left not see the parallels
Hilter?
http://www.montypython.net/scripts/minehead.php
I probably worded my comment poorly (it’s early). Natural selection is an observable process (one that can enhanced by purposefully engaging it in a controlled manner). Natural selection, however is not evolution, not in the slightest, and it doesn’t take a lot of time or research to find that out.
However, Darwin’s research has been misused, of course, as it has formed a bedrock for Racists (the real kind), abortion, violent dictatorships, because some animals are just more equal than others.
Guess there won’t be much reason to patronize nor financially support these museums once they are done blackwashing their exhibits of anything and everything that might offend blacks and producing nothing but BLM anti-white propaganda from here on out.
Too bad that, enjoyed going to museums in the past. Won’t be going to any in the future, that’s for sure.
Our predicament shows evolution in action: we in the West seem to have lost the traits that civilizations and peoples need to survive. Either we will recover them in a hurry or we will be destroyed by subversives and barbarians.
Whether you read Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species), Carroll Quigley (The Evolution of Civilizations), Mancur Olson (The Rise and Decline of Nations), or Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West), the conclusion is the same. The Ancient Roman historian Livy’s account could be applied word-for-word to the West in 2020. He advised the reader to:
“… pay close attention to how men lived, what their moral principles were, under what leaders and by what measures our empire was won and extended; then let him follow in his mind how, as discipline broke down bit by bit, morality at first foundered; how it next subsided in ever greater collapse and then began to topple headlong in ruin — until the advent of our own era, in which we can neither endure our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them.”
It’s like the psychologist getting the same answer for every inkblot: “I see racism.” and becoming insane as well: “Yeah, I see it too!”
the brits inhabit an island–they are(and for centuries have been)a seafaring nation–cotton, tea?–come on–early brits were pirates and traders–anything(land, gold, people, various natural resources)that could earn coin for the realm, or traded for the same, was fair game
scientific or otherwise, absent early exploration/colonization of sub-saharan africa by the europeans, much of the continent would remain a present-day example of the stone age
When everything is passed through the filter of Political Correctness, facts and reality goes out the window. Life, when seen through the PC prism can be unrecognized and subject to interpretation and near constant change due to mere whim. It is an attempt to control thoughts, by prohibiting the utterance of prohibited words.
In America we say: “A black man invented the light bulb not a white guy named Edison.”
In England they say : “A black man wrote Origin of Species not a white guy named Darwin.”
In both places it is now said: “If you’re white, you didn’t make that.”
Last year: Blacks invented math, trigonometry and calculus while white men were living in caves.
…
This year: Blacks declare 2+2=4 is white racism.
This is an example of liberals doing what liberals do best: Try to get social status by being even more liberal than the next guy.
“Oh yeah! You think canceling Thomas Jefferson is a big deal? I’m going to cancel Darwin! And for good measure, I’m going to cancel museums too!”
This is the mentality of the woke. Any 10-year-old can do it.
Yes, liberalism or divergence is inevitably a progressive condition.
My God!
What must it be like to be in these persons’ minds!!!
Too crowded with contradictions, egoism and ignorance to allow even a fragment of reality in.
I am old enough to remember when merely disagreeing with Darwin’s theories would get you labeled by many in academia and the Joseph Goebbels media as a dangerous Christianist theocrat. Now the Antifa/BLM brownshirts have come for Darwin – and the brave “scientists” at the Natural History Museum are rolling over and playing dead. Even worse is the dead silence from the rest of the “scientific community”. How ironic.
As I heard one devout evolutionist recently lament, Creationists turned out to be the “canary in the coal mine”. The willingness of even many conservatives to dunk on them (without even bothering to hear their case) helped set the stage for the accelerated politicization of science we are seeing. Now the brownshirts have targeted the “settled science” of evolution, and the crowd that boldly proclaims “Science is Real” has no defense.
Science, any science, works only when new discoveries are confirmed by other scientists. It is first and foremost a collective enterprise. Nothing in science is treated as Holy Writ. Everything is open to question. All controversies are open to new information. Theories, even laws have been superseded by new discoveries. Newton’s conception of gravity held sway as natural law for well over two hundred years, until Einstein showed that Newtonian gravity was merely an approximation, a special case of a much more inclusive principle, relativity.
Evolution is the central principle in biology. It’s the one which ties all the others together. Darwin’s work has been modified by new discoveries. Nevertheless, evolution remains central to the understanding of life on the planet.
To be a scientist you must first accept two, and only two, ideas as axiomatic. First, you must believe that the universe operates on a set of rules,commonly known as “natural law.” Additionally, you must believe that these laws can be understood by humanity. Everything else is technique.
Is anyone really going to argue that science doesn’t work? Look out the window. Look in the kitchen. Look anywhere you choose. Science is the author of modernity.
It’s easier for a group such as BLM to destroy history, rather than to study it or understand it.
(For those who find any racism in my comment, my observation of BLM is ti is a multi-racial Marxist group consisting of white liberal women, their super-beta white male protectors, criminals of all races, and the Black Marxists who make up the face of their revolution.)
In the “woke” thinking, ignorance is wisdom.
Ah, I see knowledge is ignorance is again in vogue…
The islands were unoccupied.
It absolutely DISGUSTS me how people are kow-towing to a terrorist organization. They may THINK that they are erasing history, but it cannot be changed no matter how they try to rewrite it. These sheeples need to either get a back-bone and stand up to them, or step aside and let others who are brave do their work.
Get these social justice warriors out of there!!! They will keep finding silly excuses to feel aggrieved until administrators, bureaucrats, and academics stop listening to them! They are unappeasable, and their ’causes’ make a mockery of any real concerns with real injustices.