Against Aloneness in the Web of Life: Ernst Haeckel, Charles Darwin, and the Art of Turning Personal Tragedy into a Portal to Transcendence

An antidote to isolation by way of tiny marine creatures and a broken Romantic heart.

In the waning winter of 1864, Charles Darwin opened a package that stopped his breath. It is one of the most magnificent works which I have ever seen, he exulted in his response to the sender a young, still obscure German marine biologist by the name of Ernst Haeckel (February 16, 1834August 9, 1919), who would go on to coin the word ecology a century before the great marine biologist Rachel Carson made...