Darwin, Rock Star?

Carl also discusses Darwin and Darwin-mania in Time:

It's only fitting to recognize the accomplishments of a great biologist. But there's a risk to all this Darwinmania: some people may come away with a fundamental misunderstanding about the science of evolution. Once Darwin mailed his manuscript of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life to his publisher, the science of evolution did not grind to a halt. That would be a bit like saying medicine peaked when Louis Pasteur demonstrated that germs cause diseases.

Today biologists are exploring evolution at a level of detail far beyond what Darwin could, and they're discovering that evolution sometimes works in ways the celebrated naturalist never imagined. “The biological problems we're dealing with are much more complex,” says Massimo Pigliucci, an evolutionary biologist at Stony Brook University in New York. “That said, it's a lot of fun. I'm not complaining.”