Coffee at the feet of a giant.

To London for Beagle Project meetings, science director Nunatak and I meet for coffee in the Natural History Museum (more on the outcome of the meetings later). We sat at the table by the statue of Charles Darwin. As you walk into the museum the first thing that greets you is a rather friendly looking sauropod skeleton. The human presence that dominates the entrance atrium is a statue of Richard Owen. When The Origin of Species was published Owen was Superintendent of natural history at the British Museum and was instrumental in the Natural History Museum becoming an independent institution. He was the Big Dog in London science and his opinion mattered. Owen was a brilliant anatomist but disagreed profoundly with Darwin and in 1860 he reviewed the Origin in a manner that Darwin lamented as 'Spiteful, extremely malignant, clever and damaging.' Darwin later described Owen's attitude as 'hatred'.

So we drank our coffee beside the great man's statue, sharing him with a trolley of latte cups and crumby plates waiting to be washed. See how Britain honours its intellectual heroes. There is some muttering that for 2009 Darwin should be moved from the cafeteria to oversee the entrance atrium and Owen packed off to mind the unwashed pots for a while. That might be a recipe for trouble, though. On the other side of the cake and coffee counter is another statue: Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog, PR man and duffer-up-in-chief of opponents of Natural Selection. He reserved particular scorn for Owen. Here he is: looking fairly ferocious. His left hand (out of shot) is clenched into a fist and it looks like he's about to leap from his seat and stick one on a passing creationist. Put Owen's statue near him in 2009 and it may happen. Maybe a better place would be in the big dinosaur gallery, because we have Owen to thank for one of the most evocative words in the English language: dinosaur.

Boo-reaucrats reject Darwin home heritage bid.

The bid to have Down House designated a world Heritage Site has been withdrawn by the UK Government Department of Culture Media and Sport. BBC story here. The people at Unesco were unconvinced of Down House's (photos by Richard Carter) merits, so the outline bid was withdrawn. A revised bid will be submitted during Darwin's anniversary year of 2009.

Down House really is Darwin central: you want to go and stand on the very ground where history was made and the intellectual landscape of the world decisively and permanently changed, Down House is it. If you wanted to fly a flag (a big, proud flag) somewhere in the world to proclaim 'birthplace of evolution' Down House is where the flagpole should be planted. Congrats to all involved in the bid, we wish them well for 2009, will be cheering them on. And as for the distant bureaucrats who nixed it, they deserve a very British obloquy:

A good slap across the kite with a large fish. Saturday update: The Guardian reports too.

Cambridge University

has details of its Darwin 2009 festival (6-10 July 2009) online. Darwin studied at Cambridge before embarking on the Beagle, and Cambridge University has done terrific work making Darwin's writings freely available at Darwin Online and the Darwin Correspondence Project.

Thanks, blognotices

Thank you to southern seafarer for the comment about FitzRoy's descendents: we'd like as many descendents of the Beagle's crew as possible to be associated with the project and be guests aboard the replica HMS Beagle. 2009 is Darwin's 200th anniversary, so inevitably the spotlight will be on Charles Darwin. However, we at the Beagle Project will see that Commander Robert FitzRoy gets his share of credit. As a sailor, I am in awe of FitzRoy's courage in circumnavigating the world in a small ship without reliable charts, engines, GPS, toasty thermals and GoreTex waterproofs or long-range weather forecasts. His weather records of the voyage are extraordinary (text here) and later in his career he was appinted Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade, and his small office grew to become the UK Meteorological Office which has become one of the leading meteorological bodies in the world. Descendents of the great man will be welcome across the gang plank of the descendent of the great ship he commanded any time.

Meanwhile, many thanks for the blog write ups about the Project to Sisu and Peak Energy. Scroll down in both cases.