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Despite the controversy, evolution was widely accepted by many naturalists within a few years of the Origin’s appearance. An important reason for this rapid triumph was Darwin’s botanical works. Seen through evolutionary eyes, plants proved to be mobile, carnivorous, sensitive – even crafty.
Scriabin was Rachmaninov’s classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and enjoyed comparable fame during his lifetime, and yet today he is much less known, especially outside Russia.
When Darwin finally published the On the Origin of Species, he tried to avoid controversy by ignoring human origins. Yet evolution was soon being attacked as the godless ‘monkey theory’.
The story of the deep, biogeophysical planetary connections and how these are intensifying the effects of climate change and economic development, is told through personal research and expeditions to remote locations across the world (including some that were previously unexplored).
Following the Beagle voyage, Darwin settled down to a quiet married life, relying on correspondence to gather facts. He wrote thousands of letters as he gathered facts to support his still-secret theory.
In this lecture we follow his early years, when he published The World of Art, a provocative Russian journal, exhibited Russian visual art in Paris, and then brought Russian music there, culminating in his production of Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov.