Einstein’s God, Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit, by Krista TIppett.

from the chapter, Evolution and Wonder, here are some bits that are close to my heart-

excerpted from Tippett/Moore discussion about Darwin- and from Darwin’s own notes:

“we are all netted together”…

Tippett: There’s something that jumps out at me, and I don’t see any commentary on it in anything I’ve read. The analogies Darwin makes, the words he uses- he drew a picture as he formulated his idea of natural selection, and it was of a tree. Here’s one way he describes natural selection: “As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications”

Now what intrigues me is that he uses that phrase, “the Tree of Life,” which harkens back to Genesis, the tree in the center of the Garden.

Moore: That tree is the tree of how we relate to everything else that is alive. And for Darwin, that isn’t to reduce human beings. It’s to raise everything that grew on that tree, even the branches that fall off, the twigs that are lost. These are the things that go extinct.

Tippett: That wither because they go extinct, yes.

Moore: They fall into the earth and they form the soil in which others grow. It’s a wonderful vision of the richness of organic nature and the unity of life.

Tippett: And of human participation and belonging to that larger picture.

Moore: Darwin has a vision of nature and it developed over a long period of time- from when he was in his twenties really until at the end of his life when he’s working on earthworms, of all things. I do have the most profound respect for the way he doggedly pursued his vision of the history of life on Earth and how great things are caused by little things. Mountains move up by small increments, the soil of the Earth is recycled through earthworms, coral reefs grow by tiny increments over tens of thousands of years. No one can see these things happening. One has to be able to imagine them happening.