Assassination of a Scientist

15 April 1865 SPECIAL TO THE TELEGRAPH

The lamentable events of the 14th instant have cast a pall across the learned societies of Britain and the Continent, and have delivered a dire blow to the progress of human thought.

On that evening, the renowned naturalist and geologist Mr Charles Darwin was attending a performance at the Dagenham Theatre of the new play Our British Cousin, adapted somewhat freely from Mr Charles Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit. Mr Darwin had been honoured with a seat in the box.

Mr Anthony Booth, a well-known player, apparently had contrived a hatred of Mr Darwin in the belief that his naturalistic speculations had undermined the foundations of religion. As he was familiar to the staffers and workers of the theatre, he was able to obtain access to the facilities without drawing comment.

The subsequent course of events is not entirely clear. Mr Booth appears to have concealed an improvised door-bar in the access to the box, and after obtaining entry, closed off the access. He thereupon entered the box, and with a derringer-pistol, shot Mr Darwin in the head.

In the confusion, he jumped to the stage, crying, “Believe God rather than man!” before making his escape. The Metropolitan Police Service has issued a bulletin for the arrest of Mr Booth and has dispatched a force of constables to search his usual places of residence.

Mr Darwin was removed to the precincts of a nearby boarding-house for medical treatment. At press time we can only say that his life hangs by a thread.
 
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I can see a much bigger divide between religion and science developing here. I can imagine many Atheist commentators using this as an example of religion being violent and non-rational.
I wander how Darwin will be if he survives.
 
The genie of at least Natural Selection is out of the bag. Wallace becomes much better known as a proponant of Evolution. A lot will depend on the recation of the Church Establishment. If they play the line its a punishment from God then battle lines are drawn if they disavow it then things will probably play much as in OTL but with a martyr to the cause.

(As an aside isn't Evolution still officially a hypothesis not a theory. It is overwhelmingly likely to be happening but can't be formally proved.
I am NOT giving succour to creationism by the way just being pedantic about language.)
 
(As an aside isn't Evolution still officially a hypothesis not a theory. It is overwhelmingly likely to be happening but can't be formally proved.
I am NOT giving succour to creationism by the way just being pedantic about language.)
No, 'theory' is vague and non-committal. You're probably meaning 'scientific theory' but then, according to Popperian orthodoxy, the 'scientific' status of a theory has nothing to do with the possibility to 'prove' it, since no theory, scientific or otherwise, can ever be 'proved': theories can only be disproved / refuted. To be 'scientific' a theory has to allow unambiguous predictions to be submitted to refutation tests.
Btw some argue that since the evolutionary theory doesn't allow such predictions (because of the time scale, butterfly effects &c.) it is not 'scientific' and thus just a 'story' of the same nature as any mythological genesis (though they are generally more specific). Not really honest, since the evolutionary theory is based on 3 totally independent lines of evidence: paleontology (the only one alluded to by creationists), embryology and the distribution of features (DNA sequences and distribution on chromosomes included). Had for some reason one of the 3 be ignored so far (say, embryology because of a religious taboo) the 2 other lines of evidences would have led to the evolutionary theory exactly as it stands, and refutable predictions about the 3rd could have be made. On a narrower basis when the structure of chromosomes and DNA was discovered (implicit at least: nobody bothered to formalize them for the creationists) predictions were made about their pattern of diversification in the living world. To deny 'scientific' status to the evolutionary theory because we already have 'too much' diverse evidence supporting it would be paradoxical: even the Vatican doesn't go that far.
 
This man will become know as the man behind the theory of Evolution
Alfred Russel Wallace.
220px-Alfred-Russel-Wallace-c1895.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace
 
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