The “Evolution Debate” is more relevant and prominent today than ever before. The year 2009—Darwin Year—marked the culmination of a trend that had begun years earlier. The double anniversary served as an important milestone, but it was by no means solely responsible for today’s interest in both Darwin as a person and his theory. By comparison, in 1959—the year of the 100th and 150th double anniversary—commemoration was largely confined to scientific circles, while public awareness of the occasion was only sporadic. The reasons for this shift over the course of half a century lie in an increased interest in popular science, the rise in public debates between opponents and proponents of the theory of evolution, and the desire to make this abstract theory more tangible and accessible than ever before through the figure of its creator- and tangible.

Both the recent bestseller-style resurgence of Darwin’s work and the ongoing debate over evolution and religion have been closely associated with the name Richard Dawkins since the 1970s. The discussion he initiated regarding the “selfish gene” was brought to the attention of a much wider audience—far beyond those interested in biological topics—primarily through his opponent Stephen J. Gould. His statements on various questions of life and his decidedly critical stance toward religion have also contributed to the fact that the British evolutionary biologist Dawkins is today regarded as the most important international popularizer and advocate of Darwin’s theory.

In the anniversary year of 2009, all media paid tribute to Darwin. Whether in print, on the radio, on television, in film, or online: Darwin was a topic everywhere—and throughout the entire year. This is all the more remarkable given that even the daily press—whose core business is covering current events and which typically addresses anniversaries only on the specific dates themselves—repeatedly took up the topic of Darwin or evolution and presented it in various contexts, including some that had to be constructed from scratch. A very similar picture emerged when looking at the World Wide Web. Here, too, there were websites created specifically to mark the dual anniversary. Some of them offered new and interesting perspectives on Darwin and his theory. Perhaps, however, nothing ensures the presence of Darwin and evolution as an idea today as much as the world of commodities and consumer culture as a whole. Both the man himself and his research are now offered in countless variations that can be bought, used, demonstrated, consumed, appropriated at will, or made accessible to others. The whole phenomenon now functions entirely independently of whether the biological theory still underlies it or not. The researcher has thus definitively and truly become “everybody’s Darwin,” everyone’s favorite.

Contents of the section in the book:

• Darwinism Today: Richard Dawkins and 
  the Popularization of the Theory of Evolution 
  Sibylle Marti
• Evolution in Black and White: 
  The Darwin Year 2009 in the Press 
  Tobias Scheidt
• Darwin Rocks Now: New Websites 
  on the theory of evolution in the Darwin Year 2009 
  Daniela Mysliwietz-Fleiß and Jan Pasternak
• “Devolutionalia” or “Charles R. Darwin Is on Facebook”: 
  A Scientist and His Theory in the World of Commodities and 
  21st-century popular culture 
  Angela Schwarz

Source: [Anonymous:] Cake featuring a “March of Progress” motif and a birthday greeting for Charles Darwin, photo: Department of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Siegen. © Photo: Department of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Siegen.