Please write a short discussion post (circa 250 words) in response to “Darwin and The Meaning of Flowers.” You can respond to a quote you find beautiful or important, you can discuss any connections you make while you read, and you can talk about your view on the importance of Darwin’s observations and theories. In your response, be sure to include why Sacks is qualified to talk about Darwin and include some gesture to his rhetorical situation(i.e. purpose, audience, cultural contexts, exigence, message).

Oliver Saks is qualified to talk about Darwin and his work because of the amount of research done on his work in Botany, as well as other scientist, through references of Darwin’s own autobiography, his son’s Francis, David Kohn, Janet Browne, etc. Oliver also mentioned that he has done his own imitation of Darwin’s work, displaying he has some experience in the study itself.  The way the beginning of the chapter is written by briefly mentions books and studies done by Darwin, as well as the introduction of “We all know the canonical story of Charles Darwin,” indicates this is meant for an audience who has knowledge of Darwin, who he is and what he has done. The most I know about Charles Darwin is Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, from 8th grade. The purpose of this chapter was to shed light on Darwin’s work in Botany and to emphasis on it’s importance, contributing to evolutionary science. The emphasis and importance of the work was shown through the comparison by including other written pieces pertaining to Botany. But I think another purpose of this was to uncover a hidden side of Charles Darwin that many didn’t know about or didn’t acknowledge, for example, “Strangely, even Darwin scholars pay relatively little attention to this botanical work…” (Saks, 2).  Also, using quotes of Darwin’s letters as proof of his passion in Botany on page 11. 

The first quote that caught my attention was “…but for him these became engines of war, from which he would lob great missiles of evidence at the skeptics outside,” (Saks, 2). The analogy of war and missiles really emphasis on how strong his passion and determination was to prove this study isn’t just some hobby or play. I found it interesting that Darwin, who contributed so much to Natural selection and evolutionary science wasn’t being taken seriously for his study or interest in plants. What was even more surprising was despite his upbringing around Botany, Darwin did not consider himself a Botanist. Which is why I thought why his work on Botany wasn’t taken seriously, but the reason was, Botanist was more so of an identifier, rather than a thinker and investigator. 

There was this section from pages 16 to 17, that irritated me, criticism from “German botanist Julius Sachs… sneered at Darwin’s suggestion that the tip of the root might be compared to the brain of a simple organism and declared that Darwin’s home based experimental techniques were laughably defective,” (Saks,16). That just upset me and made me wonder what has he done that was better to downplay other scientist. And It was satisfying to find out that Darwin’s work proved him wrong because Darwin was right. To me, the importance of Darwin’s work insect-eating plants, that there are more to plants than just needing the sun to feed itself, that they have nerves and a nervous system, the have the ability to sense something touching them and can move, like humans. 

There was one other thing on my mind while reading, which was human evolution, “…Darwin had been careful to say little in the book about human evolution, the implication of his theory were perfectly clear… But for most people, plants were a different matter.” (Saks, 10). I’m not sure if I misunderstood what was being said, but what I took out of that was, many people didn’t see humans being similar to plants so they didn’t want to be compared and that Darwin wanted to avoid criticisms. To add on, “… not fixed or predetermined, but always susceptible to change and new experience,” (Saks, 20). At that point I had thought, people heavily criticized human evolution was because they couldn’t accept they existed by chance. Then my mind wonder off to how humans might not have a pinky toe in the future based on evolution. 

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