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Charles Darwin and his relevance today

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Die Biodiversitätswand zeigt rund 3000 präparierte Tierarten. Auf dem Foto betrachten Besucher die Farben- und Formenvielfalt der Arten.
Press release,

On November 24th, 1859, 158 years ago, British naturalist Charles Robert Darwin published his work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This ground-breaking work that was a genuine bestseller at the time, laid the foundations for Darwin’s theory of evolution. It withstood all hostile responses and became the foundation of all life sciences, including biology and medicine. Two of the key messages in Darwin’s chef d’oeuvre are:

1)    Biological diversity on earth is a result of the evolutionary process,

2)    all organisms are related to each other – in other words, humans are part of nature.

But do we humans see ourselves as part of nature? The decline of insects, plastic polluting the oceans and the unabated CO2 emissions and many other examples suggest the contrary. We humans run our lives as if we had three planets Earth and their resources. "Everybody has heard of Charles Darwin who explained the conditions and processes of life to us 158 years ago. However, we humans seem to have difficulty seeing ourselves as part of nature and putting Darwin’s fundamental insights into practice,” says Johannes Vogel, Director General of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. “Only if we see ourselves as an active part of nature and learn to understand its mechanisms will we be able to stand together to protect nature and find answers and solutions to the most pressing issues of our time.”

Science and society must find solutions for the major challenges society faces – climate change, the loss of biodiversity, ensuring the supply of water and other raw materials - and there must be places where society, science and politics are brought together. This is the responsibility and genuine task of the Museum für Naturkunde as the most-visited museum in Berlin and a research institute with connections all over the world. In our function as the Leibniz Institute, we stand in the tradition of Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt and other naturalists and are committed to a sustainable future for humanity.

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