The Tenacity of the Nerd

Years ago, for whatever reason, there was a job position for a resident nerd on ships that traveled around the world. I don't know why it existed - and I don't know if it still does - but I do know that one particular British nerd became famous as a result of it. He was a young man who was aiming to be a doctor until - like me - he discovered there wasn't much good he could do for people while he was puking or passed out on the floor. What to do? Become a clergyman, I suppose... Nah. Jump on a boat and be the resident nerd!

So one day, while strolling on a beach in Chile (the life of a resident nerd is tough), he picked up a rock. Upon nerdy close examination, he found a mysterious creature inside it. It looked a lot like a barnacle, except it was missing the main feature of a barnacle: the barnacle-y shell. Everyone knows barnacles secrete a shell. That's what makes them barnacles! Apparently what everyone knows isn't exactly true. Mr. Resident Nerd had found himself a barnacle that avoids the whole secretion thing and simply burrows into a rock.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you're not a nerd you're thinking, "I'm surprised I've gotten this far in the story. Where did I see those chairs I really liked...?" If you're a nerd, however, you're wondering if Mr. Resident Nerd is haunted by the discrepancy for 35 years and devotes every waking hour for 8 of those years to nothing but studying every living and fossilized barnacle known to humankind in the hopes of figuring out what really defines a barnacle. Let me help both of you out. Non-nerds, you saw them at INspiration Interiors, but they were kinda pricey. Nerds: yes.

Mussels (mollusca), upon which live barnacles (arthropoda)

And while he was studying those little things that - for most people - are just annoyances that cut your feet when you're at the beach, he had a little idea (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) that was sitting in an envelope with instructions for his wife to publish after he died. Mr. Resident Nerd knew he didn't have the authority to put forth his little idea. Not yet. And besides, it wasn't a fully fleshed out as he wanted it to be. Not only that, but there was this barnacle puzzle to be worked out. You can't just leave these things unanswered. You just can't.

Charles Darwin was a total nerd with the tenacity of - appropriately enough - a barnacle.

Eight years and hundreds of pages later, his work was so meticulous and well done that he was well on his way to having the kind of authority that would allow him to publish what he eventually became known for. He was also a great writer, which I'm sure helped. His travelogue "Voyage of the Beagle" was a very popular book. As an example of his expressive and impressive writing, here is the last sentence from Origins:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Nerd!