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Unitarian Universalists to celebrate Darwin Day Feb. 13

January 31, 2021

The Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware will hold their sixth Darwin Day Celebration online from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 13, via Zoom.

Dr. D. Heyward Brock, a University of Delaware professor emeritus and ordained Christian minister, will speak on Charles Darwin and Herman Melville. A discussion will follow his  presentation.

Both Charles Darwin and Herman Melville visited the Galapagos Islands within a few years of each other and later wrote about what they observed and discovered while there. Darwin wrote “Voyage of the Beagle” in 1839 and “Origin of Species” in 1859;  Melville wrote “The Encantadas” in 1854.

Darwin, at 22, boarded the HMS Beagle as a naturalist who spent his time observing, collecting, and categorizing the flora, fauna, rocks and fossils. He sent specimens back to England for analysis, as he circumnavigated the globe on a five-year voyage. From these he developed his theory of evolution.

At 21, Melville, served as a seaman aboard the whaling ship, Acushnet, which sailed from New Bedford, Mass., then the whaling capital of the world, and spent five years at sea. Upon his return, he wrote prolifically about his experiences. Both Darwin and Melville had Unitarian connections, and both struggled with what their experiences, in the Galapagos and elsewhere, would mean to their religious beliefs and challenges.

Brock was a faculty member from 1968 until his retirement in 2019 at the University of Delaware where he taught courses in the humanities, sciences and social sciences and served in several administrative positions. Brock was a founder of studies in the culture of biomedicine, studies in the medical humanities and the Medical Scholars Program. 

The event is free and open to the public. To register and obtain the Zoom link, email AdultEd@uussd.org.

 

 

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