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The day was February 12, 1809. The place was Shrewsbury, England. The person born there: Charles Darwin. With the publication of his classic, On the Origins of Species<\/i>, Darwin set the wheels in motion for a dramatic transformation of the way human beings understand the world and how we came to exist in it . Here, seven speakers who\u2019ve discussed what Darwin proposed on the TED stage:<\/p>\n
Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from<\/a><\/b> Michael Pollan gives a plant\u2019s eye view<\/a><\/b> Robert Full on engineering and evolution<\/a><\/b> Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny<\/a><\/b> Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution and the ecstasy of self-transcendence<\/a><\/b> Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?<\/a><\/b>
\n\u201cDarwin himself, in his autobiography, tells the story of coming up with the idea for natural selection as a classic \u2018eureka!\u2019 moment. He\u2019s in his study, it\u2019s October of 1893 \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWho\u2019s the more sophisticated species? Well, we\u2019re all equally sophisticated. We\u2019ve been evolving just as long, along different paths. It\u2019s a cure for self-importance, a way to sort of make us feel the Darwinian idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cReally, evolution works more like a tinkerer than an engineer.\u00a0 This is really important when you begin to look at animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019m going around the world giving talks about Darwin, and usually what I\u2019m talking about is Darwin\u2019s strange inversion of reasoning. Now that title, that phrase, comes from a critic \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIn The Descent of Man, <\/i>Charles Darwin wrote a great deal about the evolution of morality. Where did it come from? Why do we have it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe first place where you would expect to see enormous evolutionary pressure today, both because of the inputs — which are becoming massive — and because of the plasticity of the organ, is the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
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