Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 357.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2025-02-12 12:10:14+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: Fwd: Caricatures of Darwin and Evolution

I send along the following on Caricatures of Darwin and 
Evolution to suggest that a such a collection of similar 
for computing and artificial intelligence would be a 
valuable resource for historical and contemporary 
studies. Perhaps bits of a collection already exist here 
and there?

Through 2023 and 2024 I trawled through British and 
N. American sources, primarily newspapers and magazines,
for early popular material on cybernetics and computing 
to catch glimpses of 'unofficial AI', as I called it, 
compiling ca. 700-800 articles and features. This exercise 
convinced me that the vox populi must not be ignored if 
we are to understand the nature of the beast now 
shuffling about the land and being stroked by the 
powerful. No doubt some here will know the value of 
demotic sources already. As a high-culture bloke 
(trained on Milton's Paradise Lost and his sources),
this was news to me.

Should anyone be interested in what I did with the 
material I collected, the following reference will lead 
you to it:

Willard McCarty, "Steps towards a therapeutic artificial 
intelligence", Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 49.1 
(2024), 104-149.

All best,
WM


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:        Caricatures of Darwin and Evolution
Date:   Wed, 12 Feb 2025 15:34:38 +0800
From:   John van Wyhe <jmv21@FASTMAIL.CO.UK>
Reply-To:       John van Wyhe <jmv21@FASTMAIL.CO.UK>
To:     MERSENNE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK



Darwin Day 12 February 2025

Today the Darwin Online project launches Caricatures of Darwin and
Evolution- the largest collection of satirical images of science ever
published- over 1,200 illustrations from 1860-1939. There are all the
familiar favourites and hundreds of unknown caricatures and satirical
images referring to Darwin and evolution- with many surprises. These
literally change the picture of the public reactions to Darwin and
evolution.

What difference to our understanding of the history does such a large
collection make? These catalogues show how slow caricaturists were to
make fun of Darwin himself and draw him as an ape or monkey- 12 years
after //Origin of species//. We can see that although a lot of fun was
made of Darwin's ideas about human descent from earlier species, almost
none of the pre-1920s caricatures show actual outrage or angry
rejection. When a magazine like //Punch// was outraged by something in
politics or a great moral injustice, the tone is radically different
from the teasing that Darwin and evolution received. The 19th-century
caricatures were not the place (or the publishers not the people) to
make serious religious objections either- because there essentially are
none. These were less mainstream than the traditional story of a
supposed uproar against evolution.

The 900 pages across three annotated catalogues with editorial
introductions provide descriptions and clarifications of these
often-misinterpreted images.

Perhaps most exciting are the 33 unknown caricatures of Charles Darwin.

https://darwin-online.org.uk/Caricatures.html
<https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdarwin-online.org.uk%2FCaricatures
.html%3Ffbclid%3DIwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR34l69zzQpGnu2L91Vu1aswMWVSHXIsSSDGEqjwjBv0k
phBT53W1trSsEI_aem_t5ztds2nsuOTf6Q1q6YVrw&h=AT3KJkAsYvU0OHkcufuOzGlaq7YjIOAeTbr3
fug3LG_jmgyllbnnPuRxY41Azs8MJDgSbh8vpU1HjQ8uAsGVIxOmVVB-EQmnXa3dpiOXs-_zuUJPFv07
L6MZd2DZn1x9I_Q-&__tn__=-UK-R&c%5b0%5d=AT0boTOUg_2ReK3Uq4EEk3AhWhSVM6N-SN9Yj43J6
9MUoHjlhaCIohbUaRp7P4QWhsi1hhwLb10u6AhKhWrGkdfcPqbZI1Lr3RUd6HANffQePdXNu536tNqqK
plRDN-UEQII62AA2ZAbE6VJq7zHUtuYPcVo8hrhpehynraP2VJu5t2NkUPhk-
LK4_nPw86YU5wXJ8Vgg6WBeho04MgJo4bTEhY>

--
Dr John van Wyhe FLS
Director
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
National University of Singapore
http://darwin-online.org.uk/people/van_wyhe.html
Phone: (+65) 84484042


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