{"id":34827,"date":"2011-05-01T15:42:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T15:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/darwin-meets-the-citizen-scientists-the-loom\/"},"modified":"2011-05-01T15:42:53","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T15:42:53","slug":"darwin-meets-the-citizen-scientists-the-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/darwin-meets-the-citizen-scientists-the-loom.php","title":{"rendered":"Darwin meets the citizen scientists | The Loom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_snails-cropped.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4484\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_snails-cropped.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"209\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p>Charles Darwin was the original crowd-sourced scientist. He may have reputation as a recluse who hid away on his country estate, but he actually turned Down House into the headquarters for a massive <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.darwinproject.ac.uk\/darwins-letters\">letter-writing campaign<\/a> that lasted for decades. In her magisterial <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Charles-Darwin-Biography-Vol-Voyaging\/dp\/0691026068\/ref=pd_sim_b_1\">biography<\/a> of Darwin, Janet Browne observes that he sometimes wrote over 1500 letters in a single year. Darwin was <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/evolution\/library\/02\/2\/text_pop\/l_022_11.html\">gathering biological intelligence<\/a>, amassing the data he would eventually marshall in his arguments for evolution. In the letters he wrote to naturalists around the world, Darwin asked for details about all manner of natural history, from the color of horses in Jamaica to the blush that shame brought to people&rsquo;s cheeks.<\/p><p>Given the skill with which Darwin used the nineteenth-century postal system, I always wonder what he would have done with the Internet. <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.plosone.org\/article\/info:doi\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0018927\">A new paper<\/a> offers a clue: he might have enlisted thousands of <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Citizen_science\">citizen scientists<\/a> to observe evolutionary change happening across an entire continent.<\/p><p>Darwin used his Victorian crowd-sourcing to collect evidence that was <em>consistent<\/em> with his evolutionary theory; he didn&rsquo;t expect that he could actually document evolutionary change happening in his own ...<\/p><p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pY0bGHKZplGdOE0SDMSKOyjm6Ko\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><br><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pY0bGHKZplGdOE0SDMSKOyjm6Ko\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_di\" border=\"0\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_YUnm4M617zg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/4c59a_J3H8Gh_sx1E\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Darwin was the original crowd-sourced scientist. He may have reputation as a recluse who hid away on his country estate, but he actually turned Down House into the headquarters for a massive letter-writing campaign that lasted for decades. In &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/darwin-meets-the-citizen-scientists-the-loom.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}