Charles Darwin played the piano to earthworms.
He wanted to know whether they could hear. He also shouted at them, breathed on them, and shone a lantern at them in the dark. He collected and weighed their excrement.
These observations are typical of Darwin's work: unassuming creatures at the very margins of our perception, their stories largely untold. He uncovers wonders far less known than the Galapagos finches — but possibly more consequential for understanding the world he saw.
Darwin’s Wonders follows that trail. These essays take the strange facts seriously — the worms, barnacles, corals, and many more — and ask what kind of world they point to.
“I am a complete millionaire in odd and curious little facts,” Darwin once wrote, and he meant it.
I studied Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the Free University Berlin. Chapters appear slowly — every few months — because they take time to get right. In between, I share the wonderful details that don’t make it into the essays.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, you’re in the right place.
