Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Ahead of their Time: Fredrick Narwal (1809-1882)

Ahead of their Time: Fredrick Narwal (1809-1882)
Fredrick Madison Narwal was born in 1809 to a middle class family in Bristol. As a boy he loved camping. His father wanted him to take up the family practice of veterinary medicine but Fredrick was too squeamish, feinting from the mere sight of cow giving birth. Unfit for the natural sciences, he was placed in a theology program where he distinguished himself by proving half of the Sermon on the Mount to be forged. There he met his Christian wife, by whom he had no children. Upon graduating, the Church sent him on a mission to convert savages in the South Pacific. Narwal took advantage of the assignment to return to his boyhood passions of fishing and hunting. It was when he noticed that it was taking him longer and longer to catch a fish that he stumbled on his brilliant principle of natural rejection. A species that is rejected by predators is the most fit to survive. He published this finding in 1859 under the title The Eradication of the Species. Although the Christians of his time were offended by the work, which presented humanity as a greater mass killer than God, today much of our modern and enlightened societal standards rest on its principles.

Fredrick Narwal died in 1882 after tripping on his long white beard and falling in the path of an oncoming stage coach. He is not to be confused with Charles Darwin, who lived in roughly the same period.
  
More Scripts Statements Songs
© 2007, 2014. Scripts by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment