Darwin Day

Darwin Day is an annual observance of the birthday of Charles Darwin, born on 12 February 1809, kept as a celebration of scientific inquiry and of the theory of evolution by natural selection that Darwin set out in On the Origin of Species (1859). It is marked with lectures, museum events, readings and dinners rather than with any rite, and is observed by humanist, secularist and atheist organisations alongside universities, museums and scientific societies. The organised movement grew from local celebrations in the 1990s, notably one begun by Robert Stephens with the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley in 1995 and events organised by the biologist Massimo Pigliucci; the Darwin Day Program was formally incorporated around the turn of the millennium to promote public education about science.

Its character varies with the observer. For scientific and educational bodies it is a straightforward commemoration of a great naturalist and an occasion for public science; for many secular and humanist organisations it doubles as a defence of the teaching of evolution against religious objection, particularly in the United States, where the place of evolution in schools has been repeatedly contested. Darwin Day thus sits at the intersection of science communication and the secular movement, honouring a scientist whose work has also become a symbol in the wider argument over science and religion, and it is one of the principal days of the modern humanist calendar.

Members of the United States House of Representatives have introduced resolutions to formally recognise Darwin Day at the federal level on several occasions since the mid-2000s, each proposing that the House designate 12 February as Darwin Day in recognition of Charles Darwin's contribution to science, and each resolution has died in committee without coming to a vote, so that Darwin Day has never achieved the kind of binding federal recognition some of its supporters have periodically sought, even as it continues to be marked informally and enthusiastically by individual universities, museums, and scientific and humanist organisations across the country without needing that formal designation to take place.

The gap between Darwin Day's wide informal observance and its lack of any official government recognition anywhere reflects the particular sensitivity of evolution as a subject in American public life, where legislators wary of being seen to take a side in the long-running political and religious controversy over the teaching of evolution in schools have shown little appetite for a largely symbolic resolution that would nonetheless generate exactly that kind of public controversy, leaving the day to be sustained entirely by the voluntary enthusiasm of the scientific and educational institutions that already choose to mark it each year.