The last 200 years of human history has been shaped by three theories—Albert Einstein’s relativity, Sigmund Freud’s interpretation of dreams and Charles Darwin’s theory on the origin of species. While Freud’s theories have since been superseded and modern physics has moved light years away from Einstein’s elegant system, Darwin’s ideas still appear relevant.

As 2009 arrives with a significant double anniversary—200 years of Darwin’s birth and 150 years of the publication of his The Origin of Species—stocktaking has begun across the globe.

Across the seas and into the Galapagos, young enthusiasts retrace his steps. Some peek into the kitchen of his Kent home, recreating the recipes of his wife Emma Wedgwood. Others pour over his papers and letters, reinterpreting his relations with man and god. Yet others look at mankind’s journey since Darwin and the evidence is overwhelming: Darwinian thoughts have influenced genetic research, physics, economics, psephology, psychology, social behaviour and art. His paradigm is used to explain everything—love, politics, finance and even the cosmos.

In Scientific American, Seed, Smithsonian, Discover Magazine, New Scientist or Cosmos, from what Darwin influenced (everything) to what he did not (the church), experts have gone on to speculate on evolution and mankind’s future.

When in July 1837, he drew a spindly sketch of a tree in his notebook and called it the “Tree of life”, Darwin had little idea that one day it would provide the dynamics to interpret a thousand-and-one fields.

“Darwinian thinking is a little bit like gravity,” reports Discover Magazine, quoting Helen Fisher, anthropologist from Rutgers University and the chief scientific adviser to an online dating service, chemistry.com. “It has infused everything.”

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