Aren’t these people making a forbidden design inference?
Cambridge University Library has announced that two notebooks written by Charles Darwin, worth many millions of pounds, have been missing for 20 years.
One of them contains the 19th Century scientist’s famous Tree of Life sketch, exploring the evolutionary relationship between species.
Following an “extensive search”, curators have now concluded they have probably been stolen.
They are launching a public appeal for help in trying to find them.
“This is heartbreaking,” Dr Jessica Gardner, the university’s librarian, tells the BBC. “We will leave no stone unturned,” in trying to discover what has happened, she adds.
Rebecca Jones, “Charles Darwin: Notebooks worth millions lost for 20 years” at BBC News
But wait, this is Darwin we are talking about. And, as a friend writes, “Odd how quickly they moved to a theory of intelligent deception. It seems rather unscientific to assume there is a mind behind the missing books.”
Indeed. A proper Darwinian response would say that the books evolved away from the Library “daily and hourly” during those twenty years.
Seriously, we sure hope they get them back. But if the theft was for ransom, they’d surely have heard from the thief by now. More likely a very wealthy collector bought them from the thief and is keeping quiet, no?
Oh wait, such inferences assume that the human mind is real. Sorry, our bad this time.