It’s great to have a poem in this new edition from Science Write Now. It’s called ‘A Certain Thought’ and is a contemplation on what it must have been like for Charles Darwin to come up with the idea of evolution.

So much of human and scientific progress comes from someone thinking in a unique way, seeing a situation, a process, a relationship differently for the first time.

But regular life goes on. There are people to love, children to care for, walks to take in the country, work to be completed.

The decision to share this new thought with the world can also cause disruption.

Darwin was most likely aware of the impact that his Theory of Natural Selection would have on the status quo, on the comforting stories people at that time told themselves about how the world was, and about humankind’s place within it.

We are currently facing a climate and biodiversity emergency and we too, must revisit the comforting stories we tell ourselves about our place in the vast ecosystem of this planet – our one and only home.

Will the new ideas someone has now, or soon will come up with, to help us to resolve this crisis be accepted? Or will we, like Darwin’s contemporaries, also struggle with the changes that must inevitably come?