June 19, 2014

"Baroque-Era Drawings Reveal Early Ideas About Evolution."

"Charles Le Brun (1619-1690) used his artistry to compare human and animal faces, later inspiring Charles Darwin to write The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals."

12 comments:

Sorun said...

So that's how Larry Bird got his name.

traditionalguy said...

The noses are the really dominant features that mutated from animal types into faces of humans according this guy's fertile imagination.

We won the survival of the fittest race by a nose.



n.n said...

Evolutionary "science" is a philosophy of pattern matching processed through induction.

lemondog said...

Nancy Pelosi

Ron said...

Let's see...which one is Althouse and which one is Meade? :o

Hagar said...

You don't have to be good to survive; just good enough.

Anonymous said...

So I wanted to comment that this sort of thing might be the result of this sort of thing.

it took three tries to find the image, tho', which has strangely disappeared from other places.

Place #1: HuffPo. GONE! Replaces with "no camera"... POOF!

Place #2: The Guardian. GONE! Quietly replaced with something different. POOF!

Is this (very historical, quite culturally important) image being censored?

Oh, btw, Althouse... you are a total Anti-Semite for posting this here post. Don't you know how such images could be received by certain ethnic groups? TRIGGERS! Triggers galore!

sinz52 said...

"Are we not men?"
-- "The Island of Dr. Moreau"

Fernandinande said...

... later inspiring Charles Darwin to write The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals."

Apparently not:

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
By Charles Darwin
...there is a slight, if any, advance in the philosophy of the subject beyond that reached by the painter Le Brun, who, in 1667, in describing the expression of fright, says: "...[bunchs French]..." I have thought the foregoing sentences worth quoting, as specimens of the surprising nonsense which has been written on the subject.

David said...

The drawings are fabulous. They have some clever commenters also.

FleetUSA said...

Actually there are many "weird" or "freak" animal drawings from the 18th-19th century. Some people collect them but I don't think they were ever considered serious science in terms of evolution.

Ann Althouse said...

"Apparently not…"

Depends on the meaning of "inspiring."