Darwin on the web

Cambridge University has won a major grant towards a project that aims to post on the web all the writings — published and unpublished — of Charles Darwin. John van Wyhe, project director, said the resource enhancement grant was awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council primarily because the end product would appeal to so many people. " It's a properly scholarly addition, but I don't see access as restricted by any means, " he said. The project builds on the major effort at Cambridge to publish Darwin's correspondence. Darwin was one of the most influential and prolific scientists in the nineteenth century and scholars believe there is much of broad interest within his works that has been difficult to access in the past. Van Wyhe set up a pilot project when he was at the University of Singapore — he had the idea because students in Asia were struggling to obtain Darwin's texts. The Singapore site now gets 300 hits a day. He believes it helped in the bid for cash. " I think it showed it was possible and what could be done if you could search through Darwin's books, " he said. Van Wyhe is planning to post all the editions of Darwin's works, such as the Origin of Species, which reveal his response to critics and other commentators over the years. He is also planning to include the works of of many of the key people who influenced Darwin, such as Thomas Malthus. " The site will run to tens of thousands of pages, " he said. Van Wyhe is the project director, but the application for funding was made by James Second of Cambridge University's department of history and philosophy of science and by The project is likely to add to the excitement among those interested in the history of evolutionary thinking. Only recently, a letter from Darwin to Alfred Wallace came to light containing the following passage. " …I crossed the Painted Lady and Purple sweetpeas, which are very differently coloured varieties, and got, even out of the same pod, both varieties perfect but none intermediate. Something of this kind I should think must occur at least with your butterflies & the three forms of Lythrum; tho' these cases are in appearance so wonderful, I do not know that they are really more so than every female in the world producing distinct male …