Janet Browne

“Darwin’s book implicitly laid claim to Adam and Eve, as time and again he showed how nature was cruel and full of blunders. The natural world has no moral validity or purpose, he argued. Animals and plants are not the product of special design or special creation. “I am fully convinced that species are not immutable,” he stated in the opening pages. No one could afterwards regard organic beings and their natural setting with anything like the same eyes as before. Nor could anyone fail to notice the way that Darwin’s biology mirrored the British way of life in all its competitive, entrepreneurial, factory spirit, or that his appeal to natural law unmistakably contributed to the general push towards secularisation and supported the claims of science to understand the world in its own terms. As well as rewriting the story of life, he was telling the tale of the rise of science in Victorian Britain.”
― Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place

“Nearly everyone Darwin knew regarded Roman Catholicism with distaste or horror.”
― Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place