Darwin Day — Expressions
Posted by zyrcster in Articles
February 12, 2009, marks the 200th birthday anniversary of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. (Coincidentally, later this year will see the 150th anniversary of his book The Origin of Species.)
The National Media Museum of London has uploaded photographs from Darwin’s book The Expression of Emotions. That book, published in 1872, concerns how humans and non-human animals express their emotions. Written to refute the idea that humans were specially endowed with the facial muscles for expression, the photos are rather delightful.
| ‘Fear’ from ‘The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals’ London 1872. Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Yimhafiz says :
“The lower photograph is a part of the photograph showing Dr Gillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne (1806-1875) and his assistant performing their ‘Faradism’ experiment on a live subject. Dr. Gillaume Duchenne is considered as the father of the application of electricity in medicine.”
Duchenne’s photos are in this same Human Expressions set on Flickr that these photos are in. |
National Media Museum |
| ‘Expressions of Suffering – Weeping’
The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, along with another book, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, was meant to questions of human origins and human psychology using Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. |
National Media Museum |
‘Helplessness’
“With respect to our first Principle, it is notorious how powerful is the force of habit. The most complex and difficult movements can in time be performed without the least effort or consciousness.” —Darwin, p. 29
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National Media Museum |
‘Sneering and Defiance’
“… The young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.” —Darwin
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National Media Museum |
‘Contempt’
“The most common method of expressing contempt is by movements about the nose, or round the mouth; but the latter movements, when strongly pronounced, indicate disgust. The nose may be slightly turned up, which apparently follows from the turning up of the upper lip; or the movement may be abbreviated into the mere wrinkling of the nose.” —Darwin, pp. 255–56
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National Media Museum |
‘Grief’
“AFTER the mind has suffered from an acute paroxysm of grief, and the cause still continues, we fall into a state of low spirits; or we may be utterly cast down and dejected. Prolonged bodily pain, if not amounting to an agony, generally leads to the same state of mind. If we expect to suffer, we are anxious; if we have no hope of relief, we despair.” —Darwin, p. 178
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National Media Museum |
| ‘Joy’
7,000 copies of the first edition of this book were printed on November 26, 1872. |
National Media Museum |
Tags: Darwin, National Media Museum
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February 12th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Now, *there’s* fodder for a re-creation project!
February 12th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Survival of the fittest.
well if we go by Darwin we must ask the question whether his theory would survive the times when every one is after one single question :
What was the start??????????????????????????????????????
March 27th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Genesis 1:27, “So God made man in his own image”.
Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.”
Genesis 2:21-22, “And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, …the Lord had taken from man, made he a woman, & brought her unto the man”.
From the above verses, it is obvious that God formed man/woman from dust instead of transforming apes to human beings.
August 27th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
[...] Charles Darwin’s The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, a book we covered in detail earlier on this [...]