Dear _______,

As you likely know, next year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's seminal work, The Origin of Species.

This double-anniversary ought to be an opportunity for science and science education communities to promote greater public understanding of Darwin's life and achievements. More people should have a sense of Darwin the man: patient, gentle and respectful, while endowed with astonishing curiousity, gargantuan observational stamina and wide-ranging intellect.

Beyond Darwin the man is of course his bold contribution: the framework he established for our understanding of life, the interrelatedness of all its forms (which we now know extends down to the molecular level), and our place in the natural world. Widespread understanding of these ideas holds great significance for how able we will be to confront many of the challenges we face locally and globally.

I've noticed that numerous other localities are planning to commemorate this bicentennial. Museums, zoological societies and universities are putting on public lectures, special exhibitions, and academic conferences. These are taking place not solely in places like Oxbridge, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and various cities in California, but also in places like North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, and closer to home, in Ontario and in B.C.

As far as I can tell there are no plans along these lines locally. I'm writing this letter to people I believe are likely to have an interest in the public understanding of science and Darwin's legacy in the hope of starting a conversation about what could be done here in Manitoba.

What are some specific things that could be done? Here are some:

• Exhibits that can travel for circulation among malls, the Forks, the foyers of the concert hall, MTC, MTS center, and such
• Exhibits could summarize the life and times of Darwin and his main achievements. Interesting things to emphasize include the route and timeline of the Beagle voyage (and D's age at the time), his discoveries about the growth of corals, barnacles, sexual selection, the reasons for his delay in publishing OOS, and the relationship with Wallace
• A "Many key ideas about evolution preceded Charles Darwin!" display. It would summarize the ideas/contributions of persons in Darwin's time and earlier who proposed ideas of change over geologic time: al-Jahiz, Lamarck, grandfather Erasmus D, Chambers, Lyell, Malthus, etc.
• Exhibits featuring Manitoba flora and fauna with well-understood natural histories: side by side exhibits of forms -- specimens, fossils or drawings -- at varying points in deep time
• Special awards for history-of-life related projects at the provincial science fair
• Workshops for high school teachers with the specific intent of sharing information about recent discoveries and techniques in natural history (I noticed that workshops of this kind are planned in other places)
• Dissemination to schools of relevant high quality materials -- videos or traveling exhibits -- as a way of marking the bicentennial
• Launching experiments with fast reproducing plant or insect species to be carried out by students, experiments of long duration (a year or longer) that would allow the observation of genetic variation
• Billboards celebrating the bicentennial, with reference to a website containing further information
• Performances of theatrical renditions of vignettes from Darwin's life or readings of his works or letters, or renditions of the famous debates

My hope is that a coordinated effort could bring at least some of these to reality. There will certainly be media attention to the bicentennial in 2009, and it seems appropriate for there to be a local effort to leverage the expected increase in public interest.

I am a member of the executive of the Humanist Association of Manitoba, and among our ranks are a number of people (non-specialists, with some exceptions) who would volunteer for things like manning exhibits in malls, transporting exhibits, acting as ticket-takers for presentations and the like. I suspect there are other groups that could likewise provide a pool of volunteers.

My own background is in physics and electrical engineering, and my interest in the life sciences occurred rather late in life. As I learned more about natural history, I was often astonished by its findings: the numerous bird and lizard "ring" species; similarities among fossils and geological formations situated across the span of oceans; plots of average brain mass to body mass across species correlating with observed animal intelligence; parthenogenesis, and how some species will temporarily adopt that strategy, returning to sexual reproduction when environmental conditions allow it; the recurring patterns of chromosomal fusion and fission that often occur in speciation, along with the mathematical sophistication of chromosomal and DNA analyses supporting (or refining, or even overturning) prior morphology-based opinions on specific ancestries.

I learned about experiments with crickets in which a female becomes sexually responsive to a male from a species with which she can't reproduce if the chirping ability of the male was defeated but the chirps from an out of view same-species male are audible. And how in the wild, birdsong under detailed analysis changes subtly over the span of decades, with the females finding the recordings of recent variants more alluring than those of older variants. And how certain plants which are normally aggressive in obtaining resources are less aggressive, i.e., more cooperative, when they sense by some molecular signaling mechanism in their roots, the presence of same species plants.

It strikes me that many aspects of this great body of knowledge are not only fascinating, but they are not especially onerous to either communicate or to comprehend. It also strikes me that a collaborative effort from the ranks of the many talented bipedal primates of this province -- our science teachers, university professors and their grad students, museum and zoo staff, people from our research institutes and biotech firms, artists, actors and filmmakers, marketers and public relations specialists -- could accomplish some wonderful things.

So, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. Do you think there ought to be an effort of this kind in Manitoba? Would you or your organization be willing to participate in some way? Should there be a steering committee struck? Which people or organizations do you imagine ought most naturally be its participants, leaders and champions?

Best regards,

Neil Schipper
Winnipeg